The story is set in former Ceylon in 1964. It could have been a work of pure fiction but it is not, because it is based on the writer’s personal experience of the loss of a friend at a young age.
The added interest of the book lies in the backdrop of the story : the political, ethnic and religious tensions in Ceylon at the time.
But it is essentially a story about growing up and about an extraordinary friendship between two adolescents : Jay , from a wealthy family and Kairo from an ordinary family.
The schools are closed, the country is unstable, they have disfunctional sets of parents. It means the boys are left to their own devices. Jay is the oldest, a born leader. Kairo is the follower, mesmerized by Jay and the wealthy environment in which he lives. Jay is given free rein to try everything and he will jolt Kairo out of passivity.
They are going to embark on adventures of all sorts in a world of make-believe.
Jay is going to share with Kairo his passion for birds . He is passionate about beautiful birds and catching them. Everything is possible for Jay. His dream : to catch a beautiful yellow bird in particular, a sunbird , like a sunbeam. The milkbar man said « caught today, the bird in the pocket. Clever as a monkey that boy. He could catch the sun in a thunderstorm if he wanted. »
Jay and Kairo build together a huge aviary in Jay’s garden where Jay wants to put together different types of birds. Kairo wonders : « Won’t they fight ? All those types of birds ? They can’t all live in the same place, can they ?Lovebirds might teach them something… »
This is really a metaphor for the country , Ceylon, at a crossroads at the time, when the tensions and discrimination ( about religion, language…) between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority will end up in a bloody civil war from 1983 till 2009.
The main theme of the book being friendship, the writer shows that the friendship between Jay and Kairo was also fraught with doubts, rivalry, flaunting , sometimes cruelty.
There will be a crescendo in crasy games and risks taking, to live life to the full . It will lead to a tragedy.
We recognized the poetry of Gunesekera’s language when he evokes Nature in a tropical country, the birds, the jungle.
The book is also a mind-opener about the history of Sri Lanka about which we knew little in fact. Some in the group would have wanted the historical and political aspect more developped by the writer.
It remains above all a story about growing up and friendship.
Anne Van Calster January 2022
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