Starry Starry Night by Shani Mootoo

I think one of the hardest things to write is from the viewpoint of a child. Sure, all adults were children at one point. But we forget, after the years of adulthood, what it felt like to be a child: those Very Important Feelings, which we now judge as trivial. Some of us are more successful at remembering than others. Some of us wanted to stay as children, some were ready to shed those early trappings as soon as possible. And as I read Starry Starry Night by Shani Mootoo, I kept thinking, “this is someone who remembers so perfectly what it felt like to be a child.” Mootoo’s narration through Andru is so perfect, it never falters, as she goes from little Anjula at 6 to an adolescent, thinking that someday she wants to be a boy and deciding that her name is Andru. (Because of this, I’ll mostly call our narrator Andru, since she was unable to have anyone really call her that in the novel.) The layers that Mootoo excavates through Andru are impressive, and I was blown away by how moving each moment was in Andru’s life. And how very real and striking it was.

In 1960s Trinidad, Anjula lives with her Ma and Pa on Selvon Street. She is loved and mostly safe, and occasionally gets phone calls from people called Mummy and Daddy. This is how her world falls apart: her real parents, Mummy and Daddy, left her in Trinidad with Mummy’s parents, Ma and Pa, while Daddy finished his medical training in Ireland. They return home so Daddy can practice medicine, and bring Tara and Anil, Anjula’s sister and brother. The pivotal moment in the novel is when you, the reader, realize all this, but Anjula hasn’t pieced it together – a process which will take many months and years – and you know that this trauma will echo through her life. What struck me most about Mootoo’s exploration of a child being separated from her parents during those formative years was how well the slow-drip realization of what happened was: Andru is upset about having to move in with Mummy and Daddy, but it takes her most of the novel to peel back what happened, and why she’s part of an extended family in a different way than she originally thought.

There are also so many of the joys of childhood in this novel, as well as the tribulations. Andru chafes at being a little girl in Trinidad in the 1960s, and dreams of maybe being a boy when she grows up. Whether it leads to true gender exploration or is a very real and decently common experience for girls who grow up in patriarchal cultures the second you realize you’re considered lesser (speaking from personal experience here!), there’s also the wonders of playing endlessly. Of having friends and losing them, of having treats, and secret plans and dreamworlds where your parents can’t follow you.

This was a beautiful novel. I loved what Mootoo did here: the writing is so true to childhood and excellently executed. Starry Starry Night was a fantastic story.

Read why Shani Mootoo wrote Starry Starry Night here!

SHANI MOOTOO is the author of six novels, three collections of poetry, and one short story collection. She is a four-time Giller Prize nominee, and her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has been awarded the Doctor of Letters honoris causa degree from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary’s James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, and Library and Archives Canada Scholar Award. Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad, and lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.

Publisher: Book*hug Press (September 23, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 5″ | 372 pages
ISBN: 9781771669566

Alison Manley

Website

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.