This just didn’t work for me, from the prose style that was overly descriptive to the characters that I struggled to connect with. I ultimately couldn’t bring myself to finish this one. The short stories format made it hard to feel compelled to continue on, even though the memoir aspects made me WANT to get to the end.

Too many threads that sounded compelling but weren’t weaves together narratively well also made this feel unmoored, like the author couldn’t settle on what they wanted to highlight or be the main focus. Sociopolitical, culture, food, poetry, family dynamics, education, and even finance itself just never came together as a mosaic instead of distinct themes and messages.

While I appreciated glimpses into life on Mauritius, I just couldn’t feel grounded and sucked in enough to see it through.

The history behind Silent Winds, Dry Seas by Vinod Busjeet is not one I am familiar with. In fact, it is the history that leads me to the book. That, and a debut author. Unfortunately, I struggle with the story itself and find it challenging to engage with the characters. At most times, it feels as if the message of the book is just beyond my grasp, just out of reach. Unfortunately, I walk away unsatisfied and not the reader for this book.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2022/12/silent-winds-dry-seas.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

This wasn't what I was expecting. It read more like a mix of memoir and coming of age fiction. It was hard to keep my attention on it and I had to end up DNFing.

This was the first book I've read set in Mauritius so I was very interested in the setting and the familial history here.

Silent Winds, Dry Seas by Vinod Busjeet is a coming-of-age novel mostly set on the island of Mauritius. Often reading like a deeply personal memoir, The story follows the life of Vishnu from a young boy to an adult when he moves to the United States and then returns to his homeland 30 years later. I love atmospheric settings and the lush descriptors make you feel like you're actually on the island, feeling the ocean breeze and smelling hints of fresh fruit and spices in the air.

By the end of the story, I realized that I just wasn't as connected to it as I thought I would be. I enjoyed the writing but thought the story fell a little flat.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the advanced reader copy!

Silent winds, dry seas

This is a great book to get a taste of the history, culture, setting, food, and what it’s like to grow up on the island of Mauritius. The main character in the book - Vishnu Bhushan - is based loosely on the author and his life growing up in Mauritius. The storyline follows the life of Vishnu from a young boy to an adult - when he moves to the U.S. and then returns to his homeland 30 years later. His family is wrought with complexity - his parents came together in an interesting way. I thoroughly enjoyed young Vishnu’s life. Set against the backdrop of Mauritanian history, culture, race, language and religion, the book is a rich and vivd tapestry of harmony and strife on an island of ethnic groups and immigrants. As is reminiscent of many stories, Vishnu seeks to study abroad. His goal, which he finally achieved, is the U.S. where he experiences the challenges of landing in unfamiliar territory and learning to navigate basic everyday life. This might appear alien to U.S. readers, but to newcomers, who have never experienced what Americans take for granted everyday, this is all new. Think for a minute how Americans would navigate (or not) if they arrived in and had to deal with everyday life in Mauritius? Most would flounder too. The author provides great perspective with a bit of humor and a pinch of sarcasm. I appreciate that the author decided to write this book as fiction rather than nonfiction, which I hope gave him the opportunity to pack the book with additional insights, situations, and details that he personally didn’t experience but observed around him. The book is interspersed with poems, which worked really well. I very much enjoyed the book and would recommend it, especially to those seeking to learn more about Mauritius. I’m impressed by this debut novel - congratulations to the author. Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Silent Wind, Dry Seas by Vinod Busjeet follows Vishnu Bhushan as he returns to his home in Mauritius 30 years after he moved to America, to see his ill father. He starts reminiscing about his childhood, his complex relationship with his father, and island’s history.
Silent Wind is a hard book for me to review. In my opinion, what makes a book “good” is a mix of objective (such as organization and coherence) and subjective (like writing style). And what influenced my reading experience the most was the writing style. I admire its ambition and interesting concepts, but the writing style was so dry in most places. It was very factual, and the story felt slow and drawn out.

I thought there’d be more chapters of the present (returning to Mauritius). There were multiple points in the narrative that would have been perfect for flashing forward to the older Vishnu’s storyline to strengthen theme and character development, but almost every time, the author chose to keep moving with the past timeline of Vishnu’s childhood. It was disappointing, because the promise of a complex father/son relationship drew me to the book in the first place.

There’s also this constant pressure and anxiety on Vishnu to be the one who “got out” of his town and out of Mauritius. But we only see how that might come into fruition in the last couple of chapters, when he goes to America for college, and the book ends on an ambiguous and abrupt note. The other characters stood out to me more strongly than Vishnu himself, and I felt like I had seen so little of the main character that I didn’t start caring about him until the 60/70% mark.

There’s a strong sense of place, which I think is necessary to ground the wide range of topics and themes the book covers: everything from colonization and immigration to religion, class, family values, and politics. Ultimately, this book was disappointing and hard to get into for me, but since it was for such a subjective reason, I’m not going to not recommend it. With writing style, it’s simply a matter of preference, and you might like it better.

I wrote a review at NPR.

"Midway through Vinod Busjeet's debut novel Silent Winds, Dry Seas, the young protagonist describes an Urdu-Hindi word, "tamasha," as one that he has "often heard in Bombay movies, a word that has become part of the Kreol language on the island. A word whose meaning encompasses song and dance, fun and excitement, as well as commotion and drama." For a story told in a relatively gentle register, it certainly has all of this in good measure." Please read more at the link below.

4 stars

Informative, tense, cultural

I am grateful to Doubleday Books for sending me a copy of this book for review.

This was an interesting coming of age story of an Indo-Mauritanian man. As a Creole person I love reading stories set in other Creole countries, but this was a bit different from the other reading I've done from Mauritius because of the perspective. I loved learning more about the complexities of life in Mauritius along with our young main character, and seeing how the people in his life and the events he witnesses change and shape him. The writing style was also engaging and fit well with the narrative. My one issue with this story was the pacing. This book is not particularly long, but at moments it felt like it was 1000 pages. I personally think the author simply included too much, and some of these events could have been edited out.

The first part of the story takes place in Mauritius as our MC (Vishnu) grows up seeing hardship and unfairness all around him, and acknowledges that his parents have pinned all of their hopes onto him. Throughout that period, he is optimistic and sees academic success as the answer to all his concerns about the future. During this period Vishnu has many external influences both positive and negative, but the author manages to make this flow within the story and not feel like some sort of "training sequence".

The last portion of the story is actually set in the US. By this point, Vishnu is an adult and we see him floundering once again as he tries to adjust to a new setting. But the foundations of his personality and values are there, and he is able to come closer to understanding and accepting himself fully. The ending really pulled everything together, and though we are left wondering what Vishnu will go on to do with the rest of his life, it felt satisfying and not incomplete.

I recommend this to readers of literary fiction, historical fiction, and fans of cultural stories.

Silent winds, dry seas was chanted by Vishnu's uncle every night to stave off the cyclones which besiege Mauritius. This coming of age story, narrated by Vishnu, takes the reader to a locale and into a culture that I found both fascinating and frustrating. Set largely in the 1960s, it's the tale of Vishnu's complicated family- his parents, his uncle, various cousins- and his own effort, encouraged by all of them, to leave the island for an overseas university education. I was not aware of the unrest which roiled Mauritius in the 1960s; Busjeet manages to inform and educate with a level hand. He's. vivid character, as are others, even the neighbor who has only a small role but who lingers in his mind (and will in yours as well). Sections of the novel are separated by poems- slow down and savor them. The strongest part of the novel is on Mauritius, as it becomes a more familiar story once he makes it to the US. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A great unexpected read- highly recommend.

I have reviewed the novel for Booklist. Please look for my review when it publishes. Thanks so much for the ARC.

This coming-of-age novel, set in Mauritius, parallels a young man's early years against the rising of a nation. While the main character matures so does his country as it strives to free itself from its colonial roots. With discussions around politics, religion, racism, and family throughout, I would have thought that I would like this more than I did. I found it very slow moving, with stilted dialogue, and sorely lacking in structure or plot. It also reminded me of older books and movies with a rather heavy male gaze. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. This is perhaps at least partially cultural, and honestly aside from the main character basically everyone felt flat, but I would have liked to have a bit more of a balance. My favorite part of this were the few scenes of sort of everyday life in Mauritius that weren't so heavily focused on the main character's family or strive for the best education.

Overall, I would recommend this for people interested in life in Mauritius in the 50s and 60s, predominantly male family dramas, and main characters that better their life through education. I think that this book will find a lot of fans, it just really really didn't work for me. I picked it up hoping for something that read more fiction than non-fiction with beautiful prose, but this reads more like it could be a thinly veiled memoir. However, I hope that this book finds its intended audience and that they fall in love with it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for providing me with an eARC of this novel, however all thoughts and opinions in this review are my own.

A descendent of Indian indentured servants in Mauritius struggles with political and familial turmoil and his desire to further his education and make his family proud.