Bringing tony Home

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Set in the 1940s and 1960s, Bringing Tony Home is a masterful modern example of a timeless genre, the bildungsroman. In the title novella, a boy returns to his old home to find Tony, his beloved dog who was abandoned when economic circumstances forced the family to leave. "Bringing Tony Home" recounts this perilous journey in detail, movingly tracing the boy's rescue attempts and his spiraling emotions as he endures changes occurring in his family. In "Elsewhere- Something Like a Love Story," a young boy finds forbidden love with a schoolmate scorned for her poverty. "Elsewhere" continues their saga, touching on the bittersweet memories they share as adults, and on the woman's increasingly precarious place in a society concerned only with status. The other stories, "Poor Young Man- A Requiem" and "Hark, The Moaning Pond- A Grandmother's Tale," delve into a young man's relationship with his father as the latter's fortunes fade, and into the now-mature man's attempts to come to grips with the death of his grandmother and what she symbolized. Abeysekara's ability to evoke the sights and sounds of another time and place, and his skill in rendering the inner lives of his characters, make Bringing Tony Home a remarkable read.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In the fine U.S. debut of Sri Lankan filmmaker and author Abeysekara, who writes in English, four contemplative stories offer four middle-aged narrators' childhood reflections, with richly varied results. In the award-winning title novella, a 10-year-old's "desperately poor" family leaves behind the loyal family dog, Tony, while moving to a smaller home. Sent back on errands a few days later, the boy makes a daylong journey on foot to bring Tony back with him; narrated by the boy in middle age, it's an impressionistic, affecting cascade of memories. In "Poor Young Man: A Requiem," the narrator puzzles over his late father's contradictions, and the reasons he rejected the old man. In "Elsewhere: Something Like a Love Story," a man realizes the resonance of his first childhood love, and how profoundly he failed her. "Hark, the Moaning Pond: A Grandmother's Tale," the collection's strangest and most remarkable tale, roots itself in the narrator's relationship with his grandmother and unexpectedly blooms into a stunning reflection on Sri Lanka's mythic past. These multilayered stories, worth repeat reading, make a welcome introduction to Abeysekara and his homeland. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Book Review

Sri Lankan director-turned-novelist Abeysekara (In My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak, 2004, etc.) evocatively combines fiction and autobiography in an award-winning novella and three short stories. Impressions of youthpainful lessons learned, emotions intensely experienced and adulthood broachedare reconsidered from the perspective of maturity in these long, sensuously detailed fictions. Like the author, the narrator of the eponymous novella is a TV director making a 12-hour series called "The Outsiders," remembering and revisiting his childhood landscape. When the narrator's family fell on hard times and had to move into a smaller home in a different village, his beloved dog Tony was left behind. The boy made a heroic attempt to rescue his pet but fell ill in the process, and Tony disappeared. Later, he found Tony again, but only to take a heart-wrenching farewell. Returning after 46 years, the director finds the scenery altered, yet alive with memory and a sense of melancholy. The narrator looks back wistfully in the other stories as well. "Poor Young Man" records his anxious and angry attitude toward his father, whose fortunes faded and who concealed mysteries. In "Elsewhere," a schoolboy's attraction to an outcast girl is revived in adulthood and recollected painfully decades later. The final story, "Hark, the Moaning Pond," considers, through reminiscences of the narrator's grandmother, the culture of Sri Lanka and the birth of shame. A sophisticated jigsaw of a book, sensitivelysometimes stiflinglymixing memory and history with regret and rites of passage. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.