Reviewers’ Darling, IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN
A Book Expo Editor’s Buzz Panel pick, In the Shadow of the Banyan (Simon & Schuster; Thorndike Large Print), Vaddey Ratner’s debut novel, is getting attention from a wide range of sources, from the New York Post, which calls it “required reading,” to a profile in USA Today, admiring reviews in the NYT Book Review, on NPR’s web site and in People magazine (which designated it a “People Pick”).
The novel is based on the author’s own experiences as a child in Cambodia, struggling to survive under the Khmer Rouge. Given its subject, the NYT Book Review marvels,
How is it that so much of this bleak novel is full of beauty, even joy? Deposited in a strange hamlet, Raami observes “flame trees in full bloom” and rice paddies with “knee-high stalks as supple as baby’s hair.” A sunrise registers as the sky’s “pinkish veil, borrowing the hue of the lotuses unfolding below.”