Reading this book was like watching a car accident, I was compelled and horrified at the same time. Katherine Boo spent almost four years interviewing and living alongside some of the world’s poorest people in the slum of Annawadi near Mumbai’s international airport. She has written the results of her researches into an un-put-downable book that reads like a novel.
A myriad of characters from different religions and at different places in the hierarchy of the slum, come living, smelling, fighting, struggling and striving off the page. But don’t get too attached, as several of them die in sordid, pointless and horrible circumstances. Others are entangled in a web of police corruption that just keeps on getting worse. I found myself wanting it to be fiction so that it could have a happy ending for some of the characters, but Annawadi is a place with few happy endings.
Katherine Boo says that when she gave a character thoughts, she has based this on extensive interviews where her subjects revealed their actual thoughts about life in general or a particular incident. What makes me uncomfortable is the extremely personal nature of some of the thoughts she puts in the book. If I revealed to a friend in quite crass terms that I was annoyed with my father for being too sick to work, but not too sick to get my mother pregnant ten times, then I don’t think I’d want my annoyance–perhaps understandable, but definitely tactless–revealed to my father in a New York Times bestseller.
This book has won lots of prizes, and was suggested to me in my book club as a must-read. I agree that is an important book because it paints a picture of a life that I cannot imagine, but a real life that these people often cannot escape through no fault of their own. It is a book that puts human faces and lives on news stories of India’s growth or India’s problems of TB. This is a great book for fans of fiction about the poor of India like A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. I also recommend it for readers who want to get a glimpse of a whole society through the lives of some of the most powerless, like in Margaret Powell’s Below Stairs, or readers of popular sociology books like The Big Necessity by Rose George. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn more about the underside of India. Just don’t expect to feel comfortable after you finish the book.
Check the WRL catalog for Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
Worth reading for the eye opening nature of it’s character’s struggles to exist, their inability to get ahead due to rampant corruption at all levels, and the resilience of the human spirit. Very true there is no happy ending for the people who’s lives are documented here… but if you need a reminder of how very fortunate you are, you will find it here.
Lisa
We are certainly fortunate. After reading this book, as I go about my daily life, I keep thinking about how much some of these people would appreciate all the mundane things I take for granted – a hot shower, a cupboard full of food, a comfortable bed, a fueled and working car to take me anywhere and lots more.
Jan
Reblogged this on Endorat's World.
I am currently reading this but finding it a tough read. Everyone seems so unlikeable and I am struggling with the idea that Ms. Boo has become a celebrated author (and presumably wealthy as well) at the expense of the very people she is writing about. I agree with Jan that it is a bit unseemly to be revealing the innermost thoughts of people you interviewed, people who will never know how successful Ms. Boo has become at their expense as they will likely never be able to read the novel. But the book is certainly eye-opening and, as Lisa says, it is quite a reminder of how fortunate we are.
Kathy
I agree that some of the characters are unlikable (except that they are real people, are they really “characters”?). It seemed to me that Katherine Boo became friends with some of the people (which is fair enough) but if she had been friends with someone else how would the perspective have changed?
And I did wonder if any of the royalties from the book are getting back to the people it is about? I did some quick research on it, but I’m not sure.
Jan
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This book is next up for my book club. Thanks for the great review.
This definitely has convinced me to check it out. Thank you for the detailed description, this sounds like a very compelling read.