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Disclaimer: In the tradition of investment advice columns disclosing their open positions on a stock, let me mention first that I have had multiple conversations with Praba Ram — who coauthored this book along with Sheila Preuitt — while they were writing it, so my perspective will be biased.

Perhaps the most startling thing about Down by the Mangroves is how it takes its time.

The first third of the book simply talks about life in a small village in the Sunderbans, as seen by Moyna, a fifth grader. There’s school, made-up games, pet goats, arguments about mishti (this is Bengal, after all)… But the tiger’s share of the narrative in this section is about the ecosystem (rivers, fish, crocodiles, tigers, beehives, myriad species of birds) and the people who depend on it for their survival. Their lives and their mythologies are intertwined with their surroundings. This entire section meanders as sedately as a river reaching the sea. Nothing really happens here. There’s no plot. You’re just seeing people in their habitat. You see this kind of documentary-like narrative in some of Ruskin Bond’s short stories about life amongst the deodars, but I don’t think it’s common. I am reminded of an introduction to Emile Zola’s Germinal where he talks about treating a story like a lab experiment where certain compounds (well-defined characters) are combined (some event or circumstance), and the job is to simply observe what happens.

In the second act, there is such an event: a tragedy that is both intensely personal (the death of a parent) and yet depressingly common in that area. (The writing in the central chapters is absolutely lovely.) How Moyna deals with this event forms the rest of the book.

What is surprising here too, given standard YA fare, is how willing the authors are to simply stop and observe. Death is hard enough as a plot point, but dealing with it? Novels targeted at this demographic often give it a chapter or so, but it largely either recedes into the background or becomes an extra shade to colour the actual plot. Down by the Mangroves chooses to spend time just watching the girl grieve. This is hard to read, maybe even harder to write if you’re a parent, but I think the authors manage something incredible here with the stillness of their gaze.

By the time Moyna starts to move on in the third act, the proceedings feel organic. She takes baby steps; her world gradually expands once again to include the people and animals around her. Here too, the authors don’t manufacture drama — there’s no major complication whose resolution carries the closure the characters might seek, just a sense of people getting on with their lives and simply constructing it around a hole where a central character once was.

I guess this is really the best reason to recommend the book to young readers: It doesn’t underestimate their attention span by assuming that it needs to be held using plot mechanics. Praba and Sheila recognize that stories might have a beginning, a middle and an end, but zoom out and you see them simply as conveniently placed markers on a long and winding road. Kudos!