Discussing Lucky Boy

Humor and Heartbreak

By Jamie Harper

In reading Shanthi Sekaran’s Lucky Boy, I can’t help but notice the use of tension, and tension relief. This novel deals with some pretty heavy topics, all of which incite a definite emotional response, from immigration, to rape, to infertility, to family dynamics, to loss. When one has so many intense subjects, it can be easy for a work to become bogged down with tension or stress for the reader, making the reading difficult and unpalatable. But in Lucky Boy, Sekaran shows us how to prevent a narrative from becoming too onenote and heavy, via the introduction of levity and tension relief. In our craft discussions, we have often discussed the variability of tensions within scenes and episodes within a large body of a story, but so far we have had little discussion of the shorter, punctuations of tension relief we see in Lucky Boy.

As we follow our main characters, Solimar and Kavya, throughout the transitional phases in their lives, immigration, parenthood, employment changes, and riding out the wave of the court systems, we often see them in moments of heartbreak, fear, and grief, written with care and attention to pull us into their experiences and emotions, and even if we don’t feel these ourselves, we understand them and empathize. As we follow Solimar in her attempts at crossing the border, finding a better life, and having her son, we feel the fear of rape, drug cartels, ICE, and the effects of her cleaning job on her unborn child. With Kavya, we ache for her as she tries to sort out what she wants, separate herself from her mother’s eugenics based beliefs, and claim a family of her own with an indifferent husband and fertility issues. So, with all of these rough topics and traumatic life events such as rape and miscarriage, and the losing of a child in general, how do we keep readers from putting the book down and walking away to find more cheerful media? As Sekaran demonstrates, we make them laugh, or, if not laugh, we jolt them out of the current emotion of the scene with a specifically placed turn of phrase. By breaking up the emotional tone of an episode, we give the reader a wider gamut of emotions to feel, as well as space the breathe, and digest the messages or themes of the narrative. As the saying goes, you can either laugh, or you can cry, and clearly Sekaran would rather we laugh, strengthening or bolstering ourselves rather than feel defeated.

We see examples of Sekaran’s unique use of humor and levity multiple times throughout Lucking Boy, starting with the opening line of the prologue, “Clara, patron saint of television and eye disease.” This unexpected cold-open surprises us, the irony clear to anyone who grew up hearing “don't sit so close to the tv, you’ll ruin your eyes,” leaving the reader intrigued as to where this line will lead them, what this patron saint will have to do with the experiences of motherhood and being an immigrant. Following this opening, anytime the subject matter strays a little too somber or heart wrenching, Sekaran provides a breath of fresh air, such as on page 68, when Silvia suspects Solimar of being pregnant, a further complication in her already complex situation, and we are provided with the line “[Soli] had pissed on many things during her journey, but never expected a reply.” This novel line proved a moment of pause and humor as we consider the idea of not only peeing on something, but of that something in someway responding to the act. Especially something like a “very expensive little stick” (p.69) to see what answer it will give us. We also get a moment of relief on page 329, when, Kavya and Rishi are forced to face both the reality of a custody battle and the mortality of Ignacio, and Rishi is contemplating the loss of a child, with the example of losing a child from being “sat on by a cat.” Which, in the grand scheme of things, seems a rather unlikely and laughable incident to worry about, especially as no indication is ever given of the couple owning a pet of any sort, let alone a smother-happy feline. Perhaps my favorite example of Sekaran’s unique brand of tension release, however, occurs on page 296, when Rishi’s sudden erectile dysfunction is described as being like “cramming a wand of string cheese into a parking meter,” an incredibly vivid description that left me howling with laughter as the visuals manifested in my mind, effectively breaking the tension of the strained moment.

As someone who also incorporates heavy, emotional topics into my writing, I found Sekaran’s skill in relieving tension and easing heartbreak to be incredibly masterful and enlightening, as the relief doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form of a surface level joke, nor does it even have to be relief for the characters.