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I just finished reading Rabindranath Maharaj‘s fresh, sad, funny novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy. The story is narrated by Samuel, a teenager who comes to Canada from Trinidad to live with his father. Some years earlier, his father had decamped to Toronto, abandoning his wife and son.

Samuel’s mother has recently died. His father has been pressured into taking him in. Now Samuel uncomfortably shares — if that’s the word — a bare, squalid Regent Park apartment. In Maharaj’s handling, what’s interesting is that, to Samuel, Toronto is just as exotic, even as bizarre, as his Trinidad village might be to a Canadian who had immigrated there. The people Samuel meets tend to be gargoyles, characters lifted straight from the comic books with which he is obsessed.