Paper Boats by Dee Lestari: book review

Paper Boats (2004, English translation 2017) is set in Indonesia from 1999 to 2003.

Introverted eighteen-year-old Keenan is leaving his grandmother and Amsterdam, where he has been studying for six years, and returning home to Indonesia to study in Bandung. He wants to be an artist, but his father has other ideas for his career.

Kugy wants to be a writer of fairy tales. In the meantime she writes long letters with secrets that she folds into paper boats and releases onto the flowing waters near her home. She goes to the train station with her best friend, Noni, and Noni ‘s boyfriend Eko, to greet Eko’s cousin, Keenan, to welcome him home.

Keenan and Kugy are perfect for each other: she writes fantastic stories but she can’t draw at all, and he paints brilliantly but can’t conjure up stories. But Kugy has been dating Josh for two years – and besides, she needs a ‘real job’ so that she can earn money. And Wanda, who buys Keenan’s artworks, has her eyes on him.

As family issues draw Keenan closer to his father, the distance between him and Kugy is widening. In the meanwhile, Remi at Kugy’s workplace is drawing closer to her. Relationships are becoming complicated.

This is a well-written Young Adult story of dreams and hopes for the future, with obstacles and challenges along life’s journey as two teenagers struggle to find their true calling and their true loves.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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