One Flew Over the Banyan Tree is rich with meticulous detail and digression, and the payoff for the many escapades is worth the wait.

The talent displayed in drawing the eccentricities, habits, speech, and inner lives of both major and minor characters is deep. This is a satisfying, picaresque feast.Characters are drawn with insightful clarity. Standouts include Grandmummy, a “Dragon” whose belief in apartheid keeps her own household divided; Rohan, her scrappy, clever grandson and dogsbody; Salgado, Rohan’s classmate and a witty glutton; Bellakay, an intellectual, impoverished raconteur; and Oswald, a cowardly, petty uncle whose aspirations fuel the well-drawn misadventures in the chapter “Young Love and a Tyrant.” Other characters include regulars at the Nameless restaurant, family, and an out-of-place, anthropomorphized canine.

The contrast between the book’s elevated language and the everyday material is a splendid mash-up of mock-seriousness and humor.

-- Clarion (4 stars)

This gentle comic novel is set in a fictional island nation called Victoria, suffused with bitter sweet Post-Colonial nostalgia and populated with quirky characters. Jansen brings so much light-hearted affection to this tale of growing up in a fondly remembered place that readers will find it hard to resist its warmth.

-- Blue Ink Review