Homework

By Suneeta Peres da Costa

Book Overview

Homework , an exquisite first novel by this remarkable 22-year-old writer, tells the story of Mina Pereira, born with antennae on top of her head which reflect all she feels, standing straight up with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582341060
• ISBN13: 9781582341064
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.7" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

a whole new look at childhood

This book gets at the discomfort and strangeness of childhood. The mix of realism, metaphor and analysis gives the novel a dimension that more straightforward childhood narratives lack. The language is surprising but always to the point. Da Costa's writing is a daring highwire act in which she brings out the humor in grief and the grief in humor. She makes you feel all the love in these characters, and the pain of this love. The book is brilliant in showing how children, with their lack of power and knowledge try to accomodate to a difficult, emotionally fraught world. And yet the lanuguage is full of pleasure. I suspect the negative reviewers simply were not able to keep up with the wonderful intelligence of this young writer.

If you liked Scout from to Kill a Mockingbird...

you'll fall in love with Mina Pereira. Suneeta Peres da Costa captures the ideas and world of a child using very adult language to express it.This book is for anyone who remembers being a kid and being frustrated with any part of the world.

Coming-of-age novel with a difference

A coming-of-age novel which uses the techniques of magic realism to excellent effect. Instead of simply recounting the alienation of a sensitive young Asian girl growing up in Australia with eccentric parents, heroine Mina is given a real physical deformity - wildly sensitive antennae on the top of her head. These strange feelers are both her link with the outside world and the badge of her alienation as her manic-depressive mother slips gradually into an animal trance, her genius sister drops out and discovers sex and her father descends into the basement to tinker obsessively with the house's wiring. Eventually, like Magnus Peake's Sepulchrave from the "Gormenghast" trilogy, Mother roosts in the house like a fantastic bird whilst underneath them all, Father sets off a conflagration from which none of the family will emerge unchanged.