Book review: The Wild Wind, by Sheena Kalayil

Sheena Kalayil’s third novel – its title taken from a poem James Joyce wrote in Trieste which plays a significant part in the book – is a finely-structured family story, set partly in the Indian state of Kerala, partly in Zambia, and partly in the United States. Much of the action takes place when the narrator, Sissy, was a girl of 11 or 12, but there are frequent flash-forwards to her adult life in the US. At the heart of the novel is her parents’ separation and then the mysterious and troubling absence of her father.