I was proud of my austerity in bringing just one book - and a slim one at that - with me to London. Of course, I knew I would likely visit some bookshops and in an English-speaking country, I could be sure of picking up something in the unlikely event that I did finish my book while there. I did not finish The Good Soldier on my trip, but I did bring 5 additional books home with me. Among them was Reef, which I picked up at Skoob Books, a large subterranean used bookstore in Bloomsbury. It had been some time since I'd read a book from a new country, so I thought I had better correct that. I was keeping an eye out in London bookstores for books by unfamiliar authors that might be in circulation there and not here. I don't believe that this is strictly the case with Romesh Gunsekera, but he was unfamiliar to me and they had 3 of his books on the shelves at Skoob. I chose Reef because the cover indicated it had been shortlisted for the Booker.
Reef is a lovely little book. The narrator's descriptions of the meals he prepared in his position as servant to a wealthy bachelor were evocative and hunger-inducing. (I might have to hop on the Staten Island ferry to get some Sri Lankan food some day soon.) And, despite what many a Goodreads reviewer has written, I really did feel that I got a sense of the changes and unrest going on in Sri Lanka during the course of the book. It was never centered, but then again, it likely wouldn't be for a boy in the narrator's position. If I have one critique of this book, it's content, not form. It reads as largely unquestioning and uncritical of the servant/master dynamic and the labor and wealth disparities in the book. This is somewhat or partly resolved at the end, but throughout my reading I had these questions: was the narrator paid a wage? does he have any say as to the conditions of his labor? when, at the end of the book, servant and master up and leave for England, it's as if he had no choice in the matter, and he's really still a child. Not to say this isn't a possible condition, just that the book treats it rather uncritically. (I really did wonder about the logistics of, like, him getting a passport.) Anyway, those concerns aside (for me, they were lingering in the background almost throughout, and occasionally came to the foreground when they were almost addressed by narrator), this really was a pleasure to read.
