Sands of Time

In the opening scene of Starry Starry Night, four-year-old Anju struggles with Barlow, the household worker tasked with bathing her. “I scream, tug, and pull,” the child narrates. “The louder I scream, the sooner she gives up, and Ma comes in to take over.” Eventually Ma “holds out her arms,” allowing Anju to “fall into them, limp.” From this moment of safety and assurance, Shani Mootoo’s sixth novel proceeds into uncertainty as its young protagonist has her first brushes with neglect and alienation.

Set in 1960s Trinidad, Anju’s story has an unusual beginning: she is being raised by Ma and Pa, who she doesn’t realize are her maternal grandparents. When her actual mother and father return from Ireland, where he was studying medicine, they are initially strangers to her. Even so, the trajectory of Anju’s central dilemma — self-actualization — runs a familiar course, shaped by the gendered, heteronormative conventions of her time and place and, perhaps more...