Triton finds immense satisfaction in preparing elaborate, inventive meals for the couple, including an English-style Christmas dinner. Mister Salgado begins to court Nili, a hotel manager of a lower social class.
Mister Salgado begins to research oceanography, focusing on the erosion of coral reefs. After Joseph leaves, Triton, still a child, assumes the responsibility of running Mister Salgado's entire household.Īs the years pass, Triton remains with Mister Salgado and demonstrates his natural talent for cooking. He clashes with the head servant, Joseph, who later sexually assaults Triton and is dismissed. Initially, Triton is given menial tasks, like sweeping and bringing Mister Salgado tea. After Triton accidentally burns down a schoolhouse, his uncle gives him to Mister Salgado as a servant. Triton then recounts his early childhood in Sri Lanka. At a gas station, he helps a recent Sri Lankan refugee, prompting him to recall the events that brought him to London. The text opens with a scene set twenty years after Triton moves to London. Set against the context of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the text provides an intimate look at the personal consequences of classism and injustice. powerful novel preserves that memory beautifully.Reef is peopled with colourful, memorable characters.The book is incandescent.Reef tells the decades-long story of Triton, a young Sri Lankan boy who works for a wealthy intellectual, Mister Salgado, and eventually becomes a successful restaurateur in London. 'Lost innocence in the final years before the war is the theme of this eloquent first novel by Romesh Gunesekera, whose Monkfish Moon, a collection of stories about his homeland of Sri Lanka attracted critical attention here in 1993. powerful novel preserves that memory beautifully.Reef is peopled with colourful, memorable characters.The book is incandescent." Edward Hower, New York Times Book Review An absolute classic, Reef is a luminous coming-of-age novel.
But beyond Mister Salgado’s house and their Sri Lankan village, there is a world falling apart, and it is in this world that Triton must become a man. Even the sun would rise from the garage and sleep behind the del tree at night. People from all over the world came here-to sell their wares, to talk, to live for this was where life took place. It was the biggest house he had ever seen. At the age of eleven, Triton goes to work as a houseboy to Mister Salgado, a marine biologist obsessed with the island’s disappearing reef.
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