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An evocative coming-of-age novel about growing up gay in Sri Lanka during the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict--one of the country's most turbulent and deadly periods. Arjie is "funny." The second son of a privileged family in Sri Lanka, he prefers staging make-believe wedding pageants with his female cousins to battling balls with the other boys. When his parents discover his innocent pastime, Arjie is forced to abandon his idyllic childhood games and adopt the rigid rules of an adult world. Bewildered by his incipient sexual awakening, mortified by the bloody Tamil-Sinhalese conflicts that threaten to tear apart his homeland, Arjie painfully grows toward manhood and an understanding of his own "different" identity. Refreshing, raw, and poignant, Funny Boy is an exquisitely written, compassionate tale of a boy's coming-of-age that quietly confounds expectations of love, family, and country as it delivers the powerful message of staying true to one's self no matter the obstacles.… (more)
User reviews
But school's aren't the only thing changing in Arjie's world. Through a series of events involving everyone in his family: his favorite dark skinned Radha Aunty finally home from America; a former lover of his mother's showing up unexpectedly to research the growing anti-Tamil climate in Sri Lanka; his father hiring a former Tamil Tiger to work as a supervisor at his hotel in predominantly Sinhalese country. Arjie realizes how society's perception of differences can have a severe impact, especially during the climax of "Funny Boy" which acts as a moment by moment account of the 1983 anti-Tamil riots that racked the country.
What begins as a simple coming out tale turns into a portrait of a country at war, seen through the eyes of a young boy as he tries to deal with his budding sexuality amidst a volatile climate.
There are six connected short stories in this book but to me it read like a cohesive novel. In the first story Anjie is seven years old, the middle child of well-off Tamil parents. Once a month all the cousins gather at their grandparents' house for a day of freedom from their parents. Anjie's favourite activity is playing bride-bride with the girl cousins with him being the bride. He loves dressing up and putting on makeup and parading around with the others in attendance. When Anjie's father discovers this is how his son spends the day he is furious and accuses him of being a 'funny boy'. Anjie doesn't know what he means but as he gets older he develops an interest in one boy after another. All the while he is growing up there are hints of growing violence against Tamils. One family friend is killed while covering the riots in Jaffna. His aunt is beaten up because she is Tamil. The hotel co-owned by his father has racial taunts painted on it. Then the violence comes to Colombo and even Anjie's father cannot ignore the threats. Their house is burned, they have to hide with friends and the grandparents are burned to death in their car. The family will move to Canada as refugees and live with an uncle.
Anjie develops throughout the book from a rather spoiled little boy to someone wise beyond his years. His world is turned upside down just as he is struggling to define his sexuality.
The main character is Arjie, a young boy who isn't quite sure what he is. He enjoys playing a game called bride-bride with his sister and female cousins, where he gets to dress up in wedding clothes and make up. But when his parents find out, they set out to try to change his behavior. Of course this doesn't go according to plan, but that's what makes this novel so good. While Arjie is coming to terms with the fact that he's gay (and learning how to hide it from his family), he's also growing up far too fast. He accompanies his mother when she spends time with an old boyfriend, he spends time with the son of a friend of his father, who lets him know that he's not alone in the world, and then he's sent to school to make him a real man.
Those events make this story excellent, but when it's mixed with the horrors of violence, murders and fear, Selvadurai creates something extraordinary. As a review on the back of the copy of the book I read said, it shows us that we are not alone. And that's exactly what Selvadurai does. His writing paints pictures of what it's like to grow up in a world unlike our own, and yet like our own all the same. We learn of events -- Arjie's feelings for a boy at school, his mother's affair, what it's like being a Tamil in Sri Lanka -- through the eyes of a boy trying to find his place in the world. While the reader might understand what's happening, Arjie doesn't, and watching him grow just adds more depth to the novel.
I enjoyed this book so much, that I immediately placed a hold on Selvadurai's second book, Cinnamon Gardens.