Under Review: Starry Starry Night by Shani Mootoo

The child narrator of Shani Mootoo’s novel, Starry Starry Night, will take her place among memorable child protagonists in adult fiction, such as Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird; Amir of The Kite Runner, and Liesel of The Book Thief. The novel employs a three-part structure and the first-person perspective of Anju, a young girl in a diasporic Indian family living in Trinidad. As Anju moves from innocence to experience, she is always intelligent and honest with herself. The result is a complex character who is up to the task of bringing readers into her vivid world. 

The character arc develops themes of coming-of-age, loss, and longing. We follow Anju from early childhood to age twelve, first living with her grandparents, then being reclaimed by her long-absent parents. The first chapter conveys her intense love for the grandparents she believes are her parents, and whom she calls Ma and Pa. There is a marvellous passage in which Anju snoops in her grandfather’s drawer, revelling in the evidence of him: “I can smell all the things that make him smell the way he does. I smell his hair oil […] I can see everything. His Vicks inhaler, pretty Barbados dollars in a gold clip, his white handkerchief. It smells of bay rum” (40). The passage, which extends over a page, is a child’s study of a person she loves and depends on. Gradually, through the rest of the first section, readers are given clues that Ma and Pa are not her parents, while Anju remains unaware. This discrepancy creates tension that pulls readers forward, and the vivid portrayal of Anju’s love for Ma and Pa allows us to experience her devastation when she is reclaimed by her biological parents. 

Mootoo’s impressive world-building grounds the novel in place, in Trinidad around the time the country gained its independence from Britain in 1962. Landscape becomes a character, and its importance is reflected by titling each of the three parts with the name of the street Anju lives on at the time. Anju describes the natural world repeatedly, in detail, and extensively, so readers come to see how it provides her solace, particularly the night sky.

 

                   

Anju also takes refuge in her active imagination, which, like the natural world, is more reliable and predictable than the world of humans. After being told that she thinks too much, she reflects:

I don’t know what she means, and why she thinks I worry. Maybe thinking is the same as worrying. Then we shouldn’t think. But I like it. No one knows what is in your mind and you can imagine all kinds of things. For instance, if you want a horse but can’t have one, you can imagine what it would be like to have a horse (142). 

The passage continues with Anju imagining caring for the horse and riding it to save her younger sister from danger. In the world of her imagination, she is no longer a powerless child.

The use of a child protagonist, with a child’s natural struggle to make sense of the world and gain autonomy, affords the book a quest structure. As Anju matures, she learns to negotiate power on a number of levels. She is practical, a survivor, aware of the limits of her power as a female child. When her parents argue and her father abandons the family in the car while far from home, Anju observes, “I don’t know if Mummy knows how to take care of herself or us in this situation […] I point where I think she should go but make sure at the same time to say I’m not sure I’m right” (254). She learns that not only girls but grown women lack power. She overhears her mother and grandmother talk about appeasing their unfaithful husbands, and she observes how her mother puts on makeup and holds dinner for husband, but he comes home late and laughs when she objects. Anju says, “when I grow up, I don’t ever want to be as weak as she is with him, or as strong as he is with her” (141). 

In early childhood, Anju is sexually abused by a number of males, including an uncle. The uncle tells her Ma will die if Anju reveals the abuse to anyone. This threat, along with Anju’s female indoctrination to always consider others first, prevents her from revealing her feelings about the abuser at a family gathering: “I am not supposed to let adults know when I don’t like them. Nice girls and good children don’t make other people feel bad“ (34). In a number of scenes, Anju fantasizes about being a boy, even attempting to use a boy’s name, and it’s difficult to tell if she truly identifies as a boy or if she only desires the power that males are granted. A third possibility is that she simply desires females and has no model for desire between women.

Anju also learns about class. Her father is a doctor and an aspiring politician who hopes to uplift those living in poverty, while her mother prefers to isolate herself within her privilege. The narrator understands what is expected of her as a daughter of the middle/upper class. As she watches the family’s employees at work in the yard, she says, “[i]f they waved, I’d wave back, but I’d have to do so without the maid or Mummy seeing, because we’re not supposed to be friendly with those kinds of workers” (189). She stumbles on the intersection of classism and ageism when she attempts to take charge of her family’s employees in her parents’ absence and is later chastised for this.

Mootoo’s world-building, use of a child’s first-person point-of-view, and skilled characterization create a lush and insightful coming-of-age novel.