 |
Funny Boy
By Shyam Selvadurai
(McClelland & Stewart, 316 pages, $17.99)
Arjun, the
protagonist of Shyam Selvadurai’s first novel, is homosexual, and “funny
boy” is the term that his family uses to derogate him. Throughout the six
chronologically arranged short stories that form the narrative, Arjun, who
lives in Sri Lanka, never has any doubt about his sexual orientation, and
his loved ones seem fairly certain as well. So much for tension. By the time
Arjun finally acts on his longings, it is page 258. For the reader, it is a
disappointing kind of vindication to have known where a story was heading so
far in advance.
Funny Boy, which
appears to be at least semi-autobiographical, trudges towards the
predictable by way of the obvious. Sri Lankan-born Toronto writer Selvadurai
telegraphs all his narrative punches, amplifying the mistake by trowelling
on melodramatic foreshadowing with such interior monologue as “Little could
I have imagined then that my father would soon step out of the frame in
which I had held him, to reveal dimensions I had never imagined him to
possess.”
Racism affords the
book’s other plot line and theme: the animosity between Sri Lanka’s
Sinhalese and Tamil populations, which finally culminated in the 1983
anti-Tamil riots. However, the roots of the antagonism are never explained.
In the version of events provided by Selvadurai, who is half Sinhalese and
half Tamil, it seems as though the Sinhalese majority suddenly started
burning, looting and killing Tamils for no apparent reason.
Despite all that,
the literati have decided that Shyam Selvadurai is a talent to be watched:
Funny Boy is one of five books on the shortlist for the $25,000 Giller Prize
for fiction. Judges Mordecai Richler, Alice Munro and editor-academic David
Staines chose it over about 85 other Canadian books published this
year. Selvadurai is also a darling of the politically correct set, because
he is an immigrant and gay. But those are simply facts, not states of grace.
What one would like from his novel is a protagonist whose struggle with his
sexuality illuminates the plight of any person who cannot deny what he or
she is, even if that means opprobrium from one’s family and society. That
conflict is explored brilliantly in Jeannette Winterson’s 1987 novel Oranges
Are Not the Only Fruit. If the subject matter of Funny Boy seems appealing
or intriguing, read Winterson.
|
|
