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Boy
Is this a beginning? Can I take the risk?' So begins the adventures of Boy; young, inexperienced, frustrated by his parents and the cloistered life he has led. One morning, his mother sends him to get marijuana for a festival. What should have been a simple errand suddenly becomes a spectacular journey of self-discovery.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 15, 2012
This book initially held my attention. The descriptions were clear, the character was like able and the setting of India was interesting. After the first few chapters my mind wandered and I no longer wondered what was going to happen to the "boy".
Krish Burton feels smothered by his mother. He feels a great deal of anger and hostility toward his overbearing parents. Unable to separate the Indian culture from the obsessiveness of his parents, he longs to break free.
Early in the story we realize that Krish is grieving the loss of his beloved brother and he has no where to express his feelings. Resentful that his parents continue to call him "BOY" instead of his name, he stews and pouts. At seventeen his behavior is very immature.
Failing his exams is a turning point in his life wherein things come crashing down.
When his mother sets him on a trip to visit his Uncle and bring home a "package", soon Krish realizes the package contains drugs.
This is a coming of age tale that fell flat for me.
Not recommended.
Krish Burton feels smothered by his mother. He feels a great deal of anger and hostility toward his overbearing parents. Unable to separate the Indian culture from the obsessiveness of his parents, he longs to break free.
Early in the story we realize that Krish is grieving the loss of his beloved brother and he has no where to express his feelings. Resentful that his parents continue to call him "BOY" instead of his name, he stews and pouts. At seventeen his behavior is very immature.
Failing his exams is a turning point in his life wherein things come crashing down.
When his mother sets him on a trip to visit his Uncle and bring home a "package", soon Krish realizes the package contains drugs.
This is a coming of age tale that fell flat for me.
Not recommended.
September 24, 2023
I don't know if maybe I wasn't in the right mindset for this one but it was a tough read.
The book started off very strong and quite enjoyable. We meet Krish, a young Mauritian boy, living in an oppressive household with overbearing parents that are constantly fussing over him and thus stifling him. It's his HSC results day, he fails and is sent on a mission for him to forget his bad results. Great premise, lovely and accurate depiction of life in Mauritius and a young protagonist whom we can relate to and who, we can guess, will be going on a journey to 'grow up'.
So much potential which unfortunately all fell flat for me. It all starts going downhill when Krish leaves his uncle's place. From then on, we don't really have any specific plot line, we just follow Krish as he goes from 'adventure' to adventure.
The first flaw, I will say is Krish himself. This book is told using stream of consciousness, through Krish's point of view. If you are going to tell a whole book from the perspective of one character, please make the character interesting, funny or charismatic. Make the readers if not appreciate, at least tolerate being in his head. Being in Krish's head was a tedious, grating torture. Krish is a whiny, uninteresting, self-centered boy with no agency. Things happen and he just lets them happen, he does not take any decisions, never knows what to do, just goes along then endlessly complains and acts scared/angry about things he is allowing to happen. I understand that maybe this no-agency part is done on purpose and might be part of his character development, but at least his whiny tone, the absolute flatness of his narrative voice could have been avoided. He could have been written as lacking confidence, but at least being witty, or funny or something, anything but the insipid character we got.
To add to this, for me, Krish was also a very self-centered character who was at the source of his issues. It is his lack of agency and his lack of courage that made his unhappiness. Yet, at the end of the book, how does Krish change? He pins all the blame of all his previous woes on his parents, seems to consider them as simpletons, acts incredibly entitled and goes from one extreme to the other with them ; before he just accepted everything they said without saying anything, now he just completely disregards them, seems to think he knows better and they know nothing (why should his parents know why he was arrested? why should his parents know where he, as an underage child, is going out at 04.00 am in the morning? he can do anything he wants!). It was baffling to see the book trying to pass this as character development, and, worse, positive, when he just went from bad to bad. From an extreme to another.
Another negative was the plot itself. From the moment Krish leaves his uncle's house, there is no particular direction. Krish does not know where he is going and we readers don't know either. A lot of the situations Krish stumbled upon seemed really absurd and inorganic. The most surreal things happen to Krish in succession, and for me all these situations felt incredibly contrived. I felt like the author wrote these situations in simply for specific messages/agendas. Stumbling on the body for a criticism of the police, stumbling on the union worker to prop up left-wing ideas... And this feeling is very much consolidated by the fact that a lot of these plot points are not resolved and do not seem to matter anymore once the message is told ; like how once Krish is freed from the station, all thoughts of his arrest, of Captain and Kid suddenly vanish from his head; instead of thinking of going to court as instructed, of thinking of his unjustly arrested friends, Krish is now making the rounds of sugarcane fields, to encourage workers to unite. Why? Just because! I feel the author could have done a better job of weaving what she wanted to say in a more organic way into the story.
I won't even talk about the insta-romance with Girl...
All in all, just a bit of a mess.
The book started off very strong and quite enjoyable. We meet Krish, a young Mauritian boy, living in an oppressive household with overbearing parents that are constantly fussing over him and thus stifling him. It's his HSC results day, he fails and is sent on a mission for him to forget his bad results. Great premise, lovely and accurate depiction of life in Mauritius and a young protagonist whom we can relate to and who, we can guess, will be going on a journey to 'grow up'.
So much potential which unfortunately all fell flat for me. It all starts going downhill when Krish leaves his uncle's place. From then on, we don't really have any specific plot line, we just follow Krish as he goes from 'adventure' to adventure.
The first flaw, I will say is Krish himself. This book is told using stream of consciousness, through Krish's point of view. If you are going to tell a whole book from the perspective of one character, please make the character interesting, funny or charismatic. Make the readers if not appreciate, at least tolerate being in his head. Being in Krish's head was a tedious, grating torture. Krish is a whiny, uninteresting, self-centered boy with no agency. Things happen and he just lets them happen, he does not take any decisions, never knows what to do, just goes along then endlessly complains and acts scared/angry about things he is allowing to happen. I understand that maybe this no-agency part is done on purpose and might be part of his character development, but at least his whiny tone, the absolute flatness of his narrative voice could have been avoided. He could have been written as lacking confidence, but at least being witty, or funny or something, anything but the insipid character we got.
To add to this, for me, Krish was also a very self-centered character who was at the source of his issues. It is his lack of agency and his lack of courage that made his unhappiness. Yet, at the end of the book, how does Krish change? He pins all the blame of all his previous woes on his parents, seems to consider them as simpletons, acts incredibly entitled and goes from one extreme to the other with them ; before he just accepted everything they said without saying anything, now he just completely disregards them, seems to think he knows better and they know nothing (why should his parents know why he was arrested? why should his parents know where he, as an underage child, is going out at 04.00 am in the morning? he can do anything he wants!). It was baffling to see the book trying to pass this as character development, and, worse, positive, when he just went from bad to bad. From an extreme to another.
Another negative was the plot itself. From the moment Krish leaves his uncle's house, there is no particular direction. Krish does not know where he is going and we readers don't know either. A lot of the situations Krish stumbled upon seemed really absurd and inorganic. The most surreal things happen to Krish in succession, and for me all these situations felt incredibly contrived. I felt like the author wrote these situations in simply for specific messages/agendas. Stumbling on the body for a criticism of the police, stumbling on the union worker to prop up left-wing ideas... And this feeling is very much consolidated by the fact that a lot of these plot points are not resolved and do not seem to matter anymore once the message is told ; like how once Krish is freed from the station, all thoughts of his arrest, of Captain and Kid suddenly vanish from his head; instead of thinking of going to court as instructed, of thinking of his unjustly arrested friends, Krish is now making the rounds of sugarcane fields, to encourage workers to unite. Why? Just because! I feel the author could have done a better job of weaving what she wanted to say in a more organic way into the story.
I won't even talk about the insta-romance with Girl...
All in all, just a bit of a mess.
August 26, 2024
3.5/5 rounded down.
Set in Mauritius and transpiring over the course of 3 days, Boy is the coming-of-age story of 17-year-old Krish Burton. About 10 pages in, I was convinced that this was going to be a laborious read - Krish seemed to be a self-centered, clueless, unlikeable character, and the thought of reading ~200 pages of his voice seemed like a dreary deed. Turns out, Lindsey Collen had a plan all along, and as Krish’s views of the world change over the course of the book, his voice changes to match his new-found maturity.
Minor spoilers follow:
Krish’s parents are of Indian heritage (Mauritius has a large Indian diaspora, largely thanks to colonial Britain’s coolie trade). His father is a taxi driver, his mother a home maker, and they seem to be reasonably well-off. In the initial pages of the book, it is evident that Krish’s parents are doing their best to give him a good life, he nevertheless finds everything about them irritating. (What did I expect from a teenager?). Having found out he failed his high school exams, Krish makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to run away (but surreptitiously – his parents believe he is with his uncle, and his uncle believes he is back home), setting in motion the events of the book.
Krish’s coming-of-age involves four distinct events involving different sets of strangers he meets along the way. The underlying thread is compassion and community exhibited by the every-man of his country, that Krish experiences firsthand and ultimately imbibes. Empathizing with these strangers and appreciating the real-life problems of adulthood for the first time in his life allows Krish to rise above his petty, self-centered teenage self. The book ends on a positive note as Krish looks forward to responsible adulthood.
This is a fine book, and the pace is just right. For the premise she set out to right a book around, Collen has indeed done a good job - her treatment of Krish’s growth comes across as “correctly done” and well-written. The change is Krish’s voice in tandem with his emotional growth is so gradual, you don’t realize it has happened until it has completely happened.
All this said, I didn’t find the book very exciting per se (my fault for picking up the book, really, because the book jacket tells you exactly what to expect - why did I expect something more from the premise?). This is the primary reason for Boy to rank as an “only ok” book in my book (bad pun – I know!).
Reading context: Reading the world choice for Mauritius
Read as: Original work in English
Book format: Physical book, borrowed from Stanford libraries
Set in Mauritius and transpiring over the course of 3 days, Boy is the coming-of-age story of 17-year-old Krish Burton. About 10 pages in, I was convinced that this was going to be a laborious read - Krish seemed to be a self-centered, clueless, unlikeable character, and the thought of reading ~200 pages of his voice seemed like a dreary deed. Turns out, Lindsey Collen had a plan all along, and as Krish’s views of the world change over the course of the book, his voice changes to match his new-found maturity.
Minor spoilers follow:
Krish’s parents are of Indian heritage (Mauritius has a large Indian diaspora, largely thanks to colonial Britain’s coolie trade). His father is a taxi driver, his mother a home maker, and they seem to be reasonably well-off. In the initial pages of the book, it is evident that Krish’s parents are doing their best to give him a good life, he nevertheless finds everything about them irritating. (What did I expect from a teenager?). Having found out he failed his high school exams, Krish makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to run away (but surreptitiously – his parents believe he is with his uncle, and his uncle believes he is back home), setting in motion the events of the book.
Krish’s coming-of-age involves four distinct events involving different sets of strangers he meets along the way. The underlying thread is compassion and community exhibited by the every-man of his country, that Krish experiences firsthand and ultimately imbibes. Empathizing with these strangers and appreciating the real-life problems of adulthood for the first time in his life allows Krish to rise above his petty, self-centered teenage self. The book ends on a positive note as Krish looks forward to responsible adulthood.
This is a fine book, and the pace is just right. For the premise she set out to right a book around, Collen has indeed done a good job - her treatment of Krish’s growth comes across as “correctly done” and well-written. The change is Krish’s voice in tandem with his emotional growth is so gradual, you don’t realize it has happened until it has completely happened.
All this said, I didn’t find the book very exciting per se (my fault for picking up the book, really, because the book jacket tells you exactly what to expect - why did I expect something more from the premise?). This is the primary reason for Boy to rank as an “only ok” book in my book (bad pun – I know!).
Reading context: Reading the world choice for Mauritius
Read as: Original work in English
Book format: Physical book, borrowed from Stanford libraries
November 11, 2025
Boy (2004) by Lindsey Collen is an intelligently crafted story of a character named Boy who undergoes a series of life-changing events in the span of two nights. This book had the potential to be a 5-star read, and here's what I feel about it:
The writing style in the first-person narrative perspective hits so close to how one writes or vents in a personal journal. The book does not specify the year the story took place, but it feels like a forgotten Mauritian setting of the 80s where the telephone was a luxury of the select few, most people worked in sugarcane fields, and the death penalty loomed openly on the streets. The descriptive language of how life was back then gave the story a three-dimensional look. And together with the many Kreol expressions and sprinkles of Bhojpuri dialogues in the book takes the win for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book where Boy went to his uncle's at Creve Coeur by bus and then he decided to go on an adventure, hitchhiking and going fishing with the people he just met. Up until the part where Boy encountered a dead body in the sea and was taken in by the police for investigation, the story was engaging, but that’s when it began to sour. The author completely flipped the switch to a different environment where Boy was tied, blindfolded, and gagged because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Then he somehow finds himself helping protestors in planning a strike. Not to forget the elephant in the room where a love interest came out of nowhere nearing the end of the story.
The story in itself is interesting in how Boy was able to experience extreme emotions in just two nights out on his own. The reason it felt short for me is because of how the events quickly became a list of things Boy had to experience to become a man. If this 200-page novel had been written more in depth, exploring how Boy was able to dismantle many of his fears and beliefs and allowing other characters in the book to share their perspectives, it would have been a better experience. Overall, I enjoyed half of it. The other half, I had to finish it.
The writing style in the first-person narrative perspective hits so close to how one writes or vents in a personal journal. The book does not specify the year the story took place, but it feels like a forgotten Mauritian setting of the 80s where the telephone was a luxury of the select few, most people worked in sugarcane fields, and the death penalty loomed openly on the streets. The descriptive language of how life was back then gave the story a three-dimensional look. And together with the many Kreol expressions and sprinkles of Bhojpuri dialogues in the book takes the win for me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book where Boy went to his uncle's at Creve Coeur by bus and then he decided to go on an adventure, hitchhiking and going fishing with the people he just met. Up until the part where Boy encountered a dead body in the sea and was taken in by the police for investigation, the story was engaging, but that’s when it began to sour. The author completely flipped the switch to a different environment where Boy was tied, blindfolded, and gagged because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Then he somehow finds himself helping protestors in planning a strike. Not to forget the elephant in the room where a love interest came out of nowhere nearing the end of the story.
The story in itself is interesting in how Boy was able to experience extreme emotions in just two nights out on his own. The reason it felt short for me is because of how the events quickly became a list of things Boy had to experience to become a man. If this 200-page novel had been written more in depth, exploring how Boy was able to dismantle many of his fears and beliefs and allowing other characters in the book to share their perspectives, it would have been a better experience. Overall, I enjoyed half of it. The other half, I had to finish it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 30, 2015
A little bit slow in the start but the story got speed and was exciting and interesting and kept my attention to the end. How a young boy can mature in just a couple of days, getting real life experiences. Enjoyed it and will definitively read another book from this author.
February 19, 2022
I read this ages ago, and scored it highly.
I think I want to read it again before I review it properly.
About a young man in Mauritius. Drugs. Strikes.
I think I want to read it again before I review it properly.
About a young man in Mauritius. Drugs. Strikes.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews