Hirsh Sawhney

South Haven is a fairly slow-moving story, but that just makes it more believable. The main character Siddharth, changes significantly over the course of the book, but is still recognizable as the boy at the book's beginning about 4 years earlier. It's a story of growing pains, being the "other," culture clashes and family politics.

The ending, deep-down I knew it was always coming, but it still made for a little shock none-the-less.

An engaging and complex coming of age story about a boy named Siddharth in the town of South Haven. Siddharth's tale begins with the loss of his mother; he must now learn to navigate adolescence with only the support of his radically minded, fanatical father Mohan Lal and his brother Arjun.

Siddharth is a genuine narrator that uses honesty like a knife; this coming of age story is sharp and serrated. Depictions of middle school, interactions with friends and family are told in plain, clear, show more bold language leaving out frivolity and flippancy. You can feel, through the author's language, Siddharth's experience as child trying to navigate grief, cultural acceptance as the child of Indian immigrants, and his search for himself.
As the story progresses, Siddharth must navigate grief and junior high school while his father struggles with his own grief and depression. Eventually, things begin to shift when his father starts a new relationship. Siddharth looks desperately for his place in the world; whether or not he has found it is the question that remains at the end of the novel. What you have witnessed in "South Haven" is one person's growth through trying circumstances. You catch a glimpse of the possibility of who and what Siddharth might become.
This book is well written; I appreciated the author's concise language, and charismatic characters. The story moves at a good pace and is engaging to the reader. Overall, a great read. It presented a more modern, political coming of age story that we need to be hearing more about. show less

This book went up and down for me. I didn't like the beginning, some of the middle was ok, and I would have hated the ending if I had been at all invested in this book. Some have called this a coming of age story, but to me it was a pretty dull story of a boy and his father living a sort of depressing life somewhere in the suburbs of South Haven. It wasn't terribly interesting, and the one thing about the book that piqued my interest (Mohan Lal's increasingly disturbing interest in India's show more BJP party, and his hatred of Muslims) was brushed over fairly quickly. Since the story takes place in 1992, just months before the Hindu nationalists started bombing mosques in central India, and the Muslims retaliated by bombing Hindu temples, I was sure this book would touch on that, but it didn't. I wonder if the author had tried to include more of this in a rough draft only to be told by someone, "No one in the US knows about this, so who cares?" The book ends abruptly, and if I had liked it more, this would have ticked me off.

I probably won't recommend this for purchase unless someone requests it. There are better so-called coming of age stories coming out every week. show less

First of all: it is sort of strange to be reading noir-style stories set in a city where police brutality and bribery and all the rest is a very real occurrence. Part of the reason I love noir (books and films) is because the characters and plots have a degree of implausibility. . . I escape into this grimy other world. But the noir-world is the real world in Delhi (to some extent) which makes it kind of. . . depressing.

As for the pieces themselves, they're either hit or miss. The best one show more (and the most 'noir') is the first one. The worst is the last one (although I didn't even finish it; I don't want sci-fi in my noir). show less