Lovely and poignant story about immigration, poverty, loss, and sacrifice set in Toronto. It's a small book that packs a punch as it overwhelms the reader with the lyricism and clarity of its language. My parents are also Trinidadian who immigrated searching for a better life and in reading this novel I was comforted by the familiarity of the Trini foods and sayings mentioned. I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author. ( )

Longlisted for the Giller, A Globe and Mail Best Book, a CBC Reads book, Winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Chariandy was born in Scarborough Ontario. His parents were immigrants from Trinidad. His father is south-east Asian, his mother from Africa.

His fictional character, Michael, has a very similar background. Michael and his older brother Francis are being raised by their single mother.

This is full of tough situations and acute feelings - and beautiful language.
"I passed a rusted orange dumpster bleeding a sludgy smear towards a storm sewer." ( )

This book written in 2017 is exactly how things are still similar in Toronto today. Maybe even worse in 2023. Very well written. Great book. ( )

Beautiful narrative and very compelling. Very good sense of pacing and the book was the exact length it needed to be. ( )

Every once in a while I find a book that is so good, so compelling that I find myself reading it in every free minute. While I'm waiting for my eggs to be ready to flip, read a few pages, while I'm in the elevator to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer, read a few more, while eating dinner, read more, read and read before bed until you are so tired you read the same paragraph six times before finally having to admit, one hour after you normally are asleep, you really can't possibly read any more. A book of this length often takes a week or more for me and this was done in two days. And now I'm sad because it's over and I'll never read it for the first time again and these characters I love will be gone. I'll miss them.

I've been to this part of Scarborough several times, sometimes going to visit the library in the area on a project to visit all of Toronto's libraries. Other times I cycled through the Rouge valley myself. So of course I had a lot of mental images as I read. And now when I ride through there on my bike again part of me will be looking for folks, wondering how they're all doing.

This one's going to be a hard one to follow. ( )