Deb­bie Ja­cob

Like all of Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj's books, our cur­rent Sun­day Arts Sec­tion (SAS) Book Club choice, The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy, feels like a sim­ple, straight­for­ward sto­ry, but it is re­al­ly rich­ly lay­ered with sym­bol­ism that pro­vides a deep, un­der­ly­ing mean­ing to the mys­ter­ies of life and the el­e­ments of sur­vival that we all share.

The un­like­ly hero of Ma­haraj's sto­ry, Sam, finds com­fort in comics where life fits neat­ly in­to frames de­fined by the blank gut­ters be­tween im­ages. The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy–a boy we nev­er meet–weaves his way through Sam's own sur­vival sto­ry–a jour­ney that car­ries him from Trinidad to Cana­da. Sam nev­er re­lin­quish­es the im­age of this boy who is so im­por­tant to his life. Sam ad­mits that he met this boy, who lives in the Ma­yaro swamp, on­ly be­cause of his need to ex­plore his world be­cause of his fa­ther's ab­sence. Had his fa­ther been present in his life, Sam re­alis­es he would not have had the free­dom to ex­plore his world and dis­cov­er The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy.

Like all boys, Sam is al­ways search­ing for a hero. As a young boy, he wor­ships a care­ful­ly craft­ed im­age of his fa­ther pro­vid­ed by his heart­bro­ken moth­er. You could say Sam con­structs his own com­ic book hero to help him nav­i­gate his way through Cana­da where every­thing seems sur­re­al, like a com­ic strip. In Cana­da, Sam re­alis­es how much loss has de­fined his life: the loss of his fa­ther, the death of his moth­er; the loss of sim­ple plea­sures like know­ing the amaz­ing ab­sorb­ing boy.

Through­out his jour­ney, Sam meets a cast of char­ac­ters, fun­ny and poignant, lost and lone­ly, who be­lieve in the mag­ic of capes and su­per­heroes and a world filled with mag­ic. Most of them are im­mi­grants search­ing for love and ac­cep­tance in a strange, cold world that re­fus­es to of­fer the com­forts of home. They're all search­ing for a way to sur­vive. Cau­tious­ly, they reach out to one an­oth­er to cre­ate their own sto­ries–per­son­alised comics–be­cause they be­lieve life must be about more than sur­vival. They be­lieve in a su­per­nat­ur­al place filled with su­per­heroes that can res­cue them from the mun­dane, bor­ing and scary jour­ney they have em­barked on in their con­fus­ing lives. They want to feel spe­cial; they want to feel loved.

The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy us­es the ve­hi­cle of a cross-cul­tur­al jour­ney to ex­plore that crack in time where many of us get stuck. Sam has to pro­pel him­self for­ward so that he is not stuck in the past. He has to ne­go­ti­ate a place where he does not hate his new life and turn back to the old life like Aun­ty Um­brel­la did when she couldn't face her life in Cana­da. He has to hold on­to the no­tion that dreams can be ful­filled so that he doesn't be­come an­gry and cyn­i­cal like his fa­ther.

The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy is about know­ing who you are be­cause of the jour­ney you have been on in this life. It is one of the best nov­els to come out of the Caribbean in the last decade.

�2 Join us in the SAS Book Club group on Face­book to dis­cuss The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy and what's hap­pen­ing in your own book clubs.