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Beach Boy
"References to my mother's not feeding me enough, sometimes overt, sometimes snide, had a currency amongst the neighbors at whose houses I often ate. I considered these insults a fee one had to pay for eating their food, for demanding their friendship, for sleeping in their beds, partaking of their quarrels, sharing their holidays, walking their dogs, making love to them, even sharing in their dreams. Generosity is often spiked."
That's Cyrus Readymoney speaking. He's smart. He's silver-tongued. He's shameless. He's all of 8 years old, the narrator and main attraction of Beach Boy, Ardashir Vakil's widely praised first novel of growing up Parsi in Bombay, circa 1970.
Cyrus is the newest initiate in the club of boyish spellbinders whose members include Edwin Mullhouse, Holden Caulfield, and Paddy Clarke, those good bad boys whose uncensored conjurings remind us how titillating, entertaining, and essentially mysterious life can be before manners and received opinions settle upon it like a veneer of dust. The benign neglect of his wealthy family not only affords Cyrus endless opportunities to observe his neighbors and tag along on their adventures, but it gives Beach Boy a cast of characters as wonderfully diverse as middle-class India itself. The big, athletic Krishnan family; the Maharani and her seductive daughter; Minoo and Mehroo Readymoney, Cyrus's cosmopolitan and self-involved progenitors; the household servant Bhagwan; brusque Aunty Zenobia; Mrs. Verma of the hundred different smiles--Ardashir Vakil evokes them all with naughty gusto. Since Cyrus is already wildly precocious and agelessly astute, calling Beach Boy a coming-of-age story in the traditional sense seems wrong. As his parents' marital difficulties reach crisis proportions, what our young hero loses is not so much his innocence, or his illusions, as his child's license to roam freely, an opportunist of insight and experience. By the time Cyrus suffers his first grown-up losses, we feel them, too, because he has given us so much delight, because we understand how deeply resonant his impish spirit is. --Joyce Thompson
211 pages
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
January 31, 2022
Like Michael Ondaatje, Ardashir Vakil writes poetry disguised as prose. So vivid and sensitive, we arm’s length observers become part of the scene through slight of literary osmosis and a touch of written magic.
October 26, 2012
Beach boy is Ardashir Vakil's first novel and was nominated for Whitbread Prize for first remarkable novel and went on to win the Betty Trask Award which is also given for first novel by authors who are under 35 years of age and residing in a current or former commonwealth country.
It's a bildungsroman or coming -of-age story of protagonist Cyrus Readymoney, who's an 8 year old Parsi boy from Bombay.
The Good old Bombay of 1970's,when the city's identity wasn't changed to the present day Mumbai, when the names of roads and streets were as old as city itself. Cyrus,the boy, grows all alone in his sea faced house on juhu beach as his parents are always on tours and business.He's a big movie buff and throngs to bombay's theaters to watch movies on his own,he talks about his love to watch movies in dark theaters amidst so many people all coming from several parts of the city,he describes the snacks and meals served in the theater.He's a big foodie and describes each and every dish that he has had with immaculate precision.
While reading one can feel mouth watering with the delicacies that he's having or describing in the story.
The novel goes on to focus on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood in which the character of Cyrus changes from being an 8 year old to a 10 yr old boy. He's belongs to rich elite class of Parsi family and while his parents are absent or on business tours,he stays with his friends ,eats and sleeps with them at their houses. He keeps himself busy by visiting his neighbours,the Krishnans,the Vermas and the Maharani are some of his closest buddies.
He values his family time a lot,whenever he gets to share it with his parents and 4 other siblings named Behroz,Adi,Nasli and Shenaz.He tells us how he misses their company and how much the family vacations means to him.The neglect of his wealthy parents towards him and his childhood presents him with many opportunities to discover his life with his neighbours and friends and essentially it gives the story many colorful characters who are as wonderful and as diverse as the cosmopolitan populace of Bombay itself. At the start of the novel we have Mrs. Verma and her sons watching movie with Cyrus in a theater, Mrs. Verma in the story is known for her make-up and fake smiles,then there are The Krishnan's who have some sort of enmity towards Mr. and Mrs. Vermas and Mr. Krishnan himself is a very proud man and his family is very strict,disciplined and athletic,Then there is Bhagwan and Barua both are servants in their house,then we have an affluent Maharani and her seductive daughter with whom Cyrus does manage to have some sexual play, and lastly his brusque Aunty Zenobia, who's a very religious and strict person.
After a while we come to know that his parents have temporarily separated and her mother shifts to a different place in the city where his father sometimes comes to visit them(his wife and his 5 children).Here,Cyrus develops some kind of harshness in his attitude for his dad as he comes to know of his infidelity with his mom.Then,he goes to a vacation with Krishnan family and while vacationing comes to know about his Father's illness.He goes back to Bombay in the midst of his vacation and tries to remember the last time he had a talk with his dad or seen his face, his mind keeps repeating "that you won't be able to see your dad ever again"
He tries to keep away from such thoughts & premonitions but they keep coming back to him, haunting and teasing him away.
Then his dad passes away,and then he realizes that he's a different person now,everyone starts behaving differently towards him, but he wants things to remain the same as if nothing had happened,the novel comes to an end with funeral ceremonies and he concentrates hard during those few days to understand the meaning of life and death. After his dad's loss, young Cyrus is upset over not being able to roam freely,discover new things,roam here and there aimlessly as a vagabond, as he used to do earlier.
His aunt Zenobia keeps him under her strict control and tries to curb his impish spirit unknowingly.
In the end,Cyrus learns ,what the death of his father means to him and his family through descriptions of his elder brother Behroz and his servant Bhagwan about his father who left something or the other for each and everyone in the family,he realizes the importance of life and is not the same individual as he was at the beginning of the story.His sobered adolescence comes from his father's death and his reflections on life and death while he was at the fire temple attending to his dad's funeral ceremonies.The emotions in him have changed and he now starts viewing himself as a responsible person,he starts experiencing the loss which earlier didn't bothered him much,he now knows what it means to have a family and how much parents contribute to a child's development.
It's a bildungsroman or coming -of-age story of protagonist Cyrus Readymoney, who's an 8 year old Parsi boy from Bombay.
The Good old Bombay of 1970's,when the city's identity wasn't changed to the present day Mumbai, when the names of roads and streets were as old as city itself. Cyrus,the boy, grows all alone in his sea faced house on juhu beach as his parents are always on tours and business.He's a big movie buff and throngs to bombay's theaters to watch movies on his own,he talks about his love to watch movies in dark theaters amidst so many people all coming from several parts of the city,he describes the snacks and meals served in the theater.He's a big foodie and describes each and every dish that he has had with immaculate precision.
While reading one can feel mouth watering with the delicacies that he's having or describing in the story.
The novel goes on to focus on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood in which the character of Cyrus changes from being an 8 year old to a 10 yr old boy. He's belongs to rich elite class of Parsi family and while his parents are absent or on business tours,he stays with his friends ,eats and sleeps with them at their houses. He keeps himself busy by visiting his neighbours,the Krishnans,the Vermas and the Maharani are some of his closest buddies.
He values his family time a lot,whenever he gets to share it with his parents and 4 other siblings named Behroz,Adi,Nasli and Shenaz.He tells us how he misses their company and how much the family vacations means to him.The neglect of his wealthy parents towards him and his childhood presents him with many opportunities to discover his life with his neighbours and friends and essentially it gives the story many colorful characters who are as wonderful and as diverse as the cosmopolitan populace of Bombay itself. At the start of the novel we have Mrs. Verma and her sons watching movie with Cyrus in a theater, Mrs. Verma in the story is known for her make-up and fake smiles,then there are The Krishnan's who have some sort of enmity towards Mr. and Mrs. Vermas and Mr. Krishnan himself is a very proud man and his family is very strict,disciplined and athletic,Then there is Bhagwan and Barua both are servants in their house,then we have an affluent Maharani and her seductive daughter with whom Cyrus does manage to have some sexual play, and lastly his brusque Aunty Zenobia, who's a very religious and strict person.
After a while we come to know that his parents have temporarily separated and her mother shifts to a different place in the city where his father sometimes comes to visit them(his wife and his 5 children).Here,Cyrus develops some kind of harshness in his attitude for his dad as he comes to know of his infidelity with his mom.Then,he goes to a vacation with Krishnan family and while vacationing comes to know about his Father's illness.He goes back to Bombay in the midst of his vacation and tries to remember the last time he had a talk with his dad or seen his face, his mind keeps repeating "that you won't be able to see your dad ever again"
He tries to keep away from such thoughts & premonitions but they keep coming back to him, haunting and teasing him away.
Then his dad passes away,and then he realizes that he's a different person now,everyone starts behaving differently towards him, but he wants things to remain the same as if nothing had happened,the novel comes to an end with funeral ceremonies and he concentrates hard during those few days to understand the meaning of life and death. After his dad's loss, young Cyrus is upset over not being able to roam freely,discover new things,roam here and there aimlessly as a vagabond, as he used to do earlier.
His aunt Zenobia keeps him under her strict control and tries to curb his impish spirit unknowingly.
In the end,Cyrus learns ,what the death of his father means to him and his family through descriptions of his elder brother Behroz and his servant Bhagwan about his father who left something or the other for each and everyone in the family,he realizes the importance of life and is not the same individual as he was at the beginning of the story.His sobered adolescence comes from his father's death and his reflections on life and death while he was at the fire temple attending to his dad's funeral ceremonies.The emotions in him have changed and he now starts viewing himself as a responsible person,he starts experiencing the loss which earlier didn't bothered him much,he now knows what it means to have a family and how much parents contribute to a child's development.
June 25, 2018
This book does the chaos of Bombay tremendous justice - it encapsulates the melodramatic and likely dubious quality of growing up surrounded by so many people with flair and humour. The book reminds us of some of the reasons behind the utter lack of comprehension surrounding privacy as a concept in Bombay, through the eyes of a carefree protagonist. We watch the protagonist come of age through this story, which sometimes feels choppy - another nod to the bewildering world in which he is surrounded by a diverse range of colourful characters. Particularly accurate for me was the splashes of erotic discovery found sporadically throughout the narrative. The author has done a splendid job of this tale as a first-time publication of a novel.
March 17, 2023
This is a coming of age story that reminds the reader of Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye". The language is pretty straightforward and the subject matter is refreshing despite the use of familiar tropes. A perfect book for a lazy Summer afternoon.
March 24, 2025
This was one of my favorite books growing up, and I can hardly wait to get another copy. This was the first book that I liked that was not written by an American or British author. (I was eleven or twelve when I first read it.)
February 13, 2025
Wonderful, short, tightly written book. Brings to life the joys of Mumbai from decades ago - when life was slower, simpler even for the wealthier lot.
August 17, 2025
I don't recall which friend gifted this book to me. After having finished it, I am massively disappointed in that friend, and I feel better for not remembering who gifted this book to me for it would have spoiled our friendship.
July 21, 2013
Bombay, années soixante-dix. Cyrus Readymoney est un jeune Parsi, qui vit tout près de Juhu Beach, dans un enclos protégé, presque familial : il se laisse emmener au cinéma par Mme Verma, squatte les loisirs et les repas de la tribu Krishnan, est l'ami d'une maharani déchue, qui aime ses chiens plus que ses filles adoptives... Sa famille à lui, passablement excentrique - sa mère folle de sport, son père businessman volage -, il ne la voit guère, même s'il y a manifestement de l'amour entre eux. Car Cyrus, élève turbulent, menteur, chapardeur, est à un âge où il fait ses propres expériences de la vie (sexe, cigarettes et rock'n'roll), et sèche volontiers les cours de son collège jésuite pour se réfugier dans les salles obscures : Cyrus est fan des films de Bollywood. Tout irait pour le mieux si le malheur, un triste jour, ne venait frapper à la porte des Readymoney. Et Cyrus va faire, malgré lui, son entrée dans l'âge adulte. Tout en conservant sa fraîcheur, son quant-à-soi. Beach Boy est un roman d'initiation bien peu conventionnel, sans doute en partie autobiographique, écrit avec humour et tendresse. Cyrus est un personnage des plus attachants, inoubliable. A travers son histoire, l'auteur évoque de manière drôle et vivante le Bombay de son enfance, dans un style enlevé, brillant, unique. Ce premier roman, salué entre autres par Salman Rushdie, est un coup de maître.
Ardashir Vakil, né à Bombay en 1962, vit avec sa famille à Londres. Il enseigne l'anglais à la Pimlico Comprehensive School.
«Un livre intense, vif et surprenant» Salman Rushdie
Ardashir Vakil, né à Bombay en 1962, vit avec sa famille à Londres. Il enseigne l'anglais à la Pimlico Comprehensive School.
«Un livre intense, vif et surprenant» Salman Rushdie
November 8, 2008
Beach Boy is a intriguing story about a young boy living in india. the story focuses on the then=me of family. the boy lives with his parents and brothers yet he spends most of his time in the house of his neighbors.he is careless and free. he lives his life as any boy would yet changes effect the way he looks at life and family.
His mom cheats on his father with a guy and their home is shakend a bit. The boy relizes things aren't as good as he thaught them to be. his family starts to create a gap siince the cheating incident happened.When his father gets sick his family is seperated and the boy is alone. He spends more time in his neighbors home. The boy's family is seperated and they have little communication. The boy starts to value the time they spend toghether more and value his family more too.the boy goes through some hard stuffbut learns that family is worth alot to a individual.
His mom cheats on his father with a guy and their home is shakend a bit. The boy relizes things aren't as good as he thaught them to be. his family starts to create a gap siince the cheating incident happened.When his father gets sick his family is seperated and the boy is alone. He spends more time in his neighbors home. The boy's family is seperated and they have little communication. The boy starts to value the time they spend toghether more and value his family more too.the boy goes through some hard stuffbut learns that family is worth alot to a individual.
June 30, 2012
I feel like I went to school with Cyrus Readymoney (in fact, I may have), which contributed in no small way to my enjoyment of this book. Vakil's portrait of St. Mary's is dead on, down to the kheema pao in the canteen, sadistic principal, and Tickly Father selling lunch coupons. Beyond that, he captures the varied flavors of life in Bombay with a sympathetic eye. Cyrus gives us a compelling, richly detailed account of his struggles with family, the interactions with his neighbors, and the frenzy of the city, speaking with a voice more advanced than his eight years of age. Above all, this is a novel about dealing with loss and grief in a society where emotions are supposed to be expressed openly and with attendant dramatic effect. Highly recommended reading for anyone who likes Indian fiction.
August 23, 2022
Темата на Момчето от плажа е много сходна с Бога на дребните неща, която прочетох неотдавна. Пак за Индия през горе-долу същия период – началото на 1970-те, от дистанция на времето и израстването. Но не е в селска Керала, а в мегаполиса Бомбай (днес – Мумбай). И тук героят е дете (но момче) и е от религиозна малцинствена, но имотна общност (парси); и тук киното е главният магнит на детското въображение; и тук се е събрал и общественият, и … кулинарният калейдоскоп на Субконтинента. Всички съседи на Сайръс в крайбрежно предградие Джуху са от различни общности и го гощават с традиционните си блюда. А той не се спира да обикаля не само техните домове, ами да се отлъчва сам в огромния град в преследване на пропуснатите филми. И екзотични улични лакомства, от някои от които даже и корем не боли. Като същевременно си отваря очите за момичетата и … за майките на приятелите си.
September 13, 2012
This was an interesting read but . . . it was a little difficult to get past the rather large numbers of untranslated non English words. It did add to the mood/setting in that I didn't understand what was going on, not understanding Hindi, Parsi and whatever else might have been used. . .online translators couldn't detect the language. . . I felt like I was missing out. On the other hand the sensuality of the descriptions of the city, the beach, the trip to Kerala, and especially the food, was fascinating and evocative.
August 12, 2016
I read this book when I was in Grade 7. Couldn’t make much sense of it then. Seemed like a complicated book with relationship ups and downs with small erotic accounting casually thrown here and there.
8years later when I read it-BLAM!!!!
Written with the backdrop of 60-70s India, the story unravels the tale of Cyrus, a boy growing up in post-independent modern India. Education, family, death and the pangs of adolescent love-the writer jumbles the events perfectly to provide the perfect balance.
8years later when I read it-BLAM!!!!
Written with the backdrop of 60-70s India, the story unravels the tale of Cyrus, a boy growing up in post-independent modern India. Education, family, death and the pangs of adolescent love-the writer jumbles the events perfectly to provide the perfect balance.
March 2, 2015
I'm not sure why but this book never clicked with me. I started reading it in mid September and didn't finish until the end of February! I could put it down and not think about it or care about it for weeks. That's not typical for me.
When I did pick it up I really enjoyed it. Vakil's storytelling was beautiful and quite tender. I liked all the untranslated Hindi...good practice!
Overall a good read.
When I did pick it up I really enjoyed it. Vakil's storytelling was beautiful and quite tender. I liked all the untranslated Hindi...good practice!
Overall a good read.
March 12, 2009
Gave me a glimpse of Bombay of a long time ago and grapic details of the lives of Parsi (and non-) from the time. We see life through the eyes of a precocious ten year old imp,and are privy to all thats running through his head. The story is funny, fast and yet easy going. Every characteretched colorful and the book with so may moods, it reminded me of my trek through my early teens.
October 13, 2014
I enjoyed this. I haven't read a book set in India since A Fine Balance traumatised me (don't get me wrong, it's brilliant, but WOW) but this reminded me of Midnight's Children in its descriptions of Bombay. Nothing really happens and the story is so fluid that I didn't get emotionally attached to the characters, but the descriptions and the atmosphere are beautiful and truly evocative.
December 5, 2020
A coming of age story set in Bombay. I'm a sucker for Indian literature, but honestly I struggled with this book. It took me two week to read it. The description was superb. The characters weren't that interesting and I couldn't cared what happened to most of them. This was the first Indian book I didn't like enough. I think two stars are okay.
March 9, 2008
i'm digging it so far . . it grabbed me in the first few pages . . though he does a thorough descriptive job which may or may not keep my attentions . . he definitely paints a detailed picture in my head
October 24, 2008
The story of a young Parsee boy growing up in Mumbai amidst crazy parents, a divorce, culture clashes etc etc. It's an honest peice of work with some touching moments but the writing did not blow me away and the story verged on a little jaded.
November 21, 2024
I found this interesting as a look into the life of a middle class Zoroastrian family in Bombay in the nineties. The scene is painted from the point of view of an eight year old child. There's not much of a story here-just the child's impressions about his family and the people around.
February 26, 2008
Some nice little scenes, but they don't add up to much. Also has a tedious tennis section. The best part of the book by far is the lovingly-described, delicious sounding street foods of 1970s Bombay.
April 22, 2008
Really well written!! SO good!
March 10, 2011
This was one of the 1999 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...
June 26, 2016
I honestly can't remember what happens in this book.
June 9, 2015
Unexpected read. Hadn't heard of the book. But loved it. I wish it was more popular than it currently is.
December 4, 2015
Entertaining enough, but not one of my favorites.
April 27, 2016
I want to just read ....its my curriculam
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2016
I enjoyed this coming of age story of a well-off young boy in India in the 1970's, mostly for the cultural contrasts to our life in America
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews