Half Gods

In Kumarasamy’s debut collection of linked stories, a boy disappears in the wake of a storm, an entomologist stages an act of political resistance after his son disappears, and a pair of brothers go to Lake George with a young Sikh boy who changes both of their lives in different ways. At the center of it all is a family whose patriarch, Muthu, escaped Sri Lanka during the civil war and settled in New Jersey with his only surviving daughter, Nalini, who would later birth two sons, Arjun and Karna. Each gets his or her turn as the focus of a story. Nalini, who straddles both her father’s war-torn Sri Lanka and her sons’ suburban New Jersey, is easily the collection’s strongest character, embodying the tension between the two. Though, as a young woman, she seems to get it all right—she escapes from New Jersey, finds a loving husband and a big house—the lingering trauma of her past leads her to implode her marriage, sending her back to her father’s side. Kumarasamy’s prose is gorgeous and assured, capable of rendering both major tragedy (war, the dissolution of a marriage, the loss of a child) and minor tragedy (a botched effort at matchmaking, a pitying Christmas invitation) with care and precision. Though the stories can sometimes blend together, the writing is strong throughout, resulting in a wonderful, auspicious debut. (June)