LIFE, DEATH, AND HOPE IN A MUMBAI UNDERCITY
BY KATHERINE BOO
Anyone still suffering from Slumdog Millionaire detox will find this "non-fiction novel" a good fix. Written from different points of view, it follows the lives of the inhabitants of a Mumbai slum. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Boo actually spent three years living in that same slum herself. Through a superior control of the English language and great tact, the journalist renders the indelicate state of their lives beautiful. Reading, I almost forget that this is actually a documentary on people just living across the ocean. This book is no guilt trip; it leads your mind on a "think trip". Completely unromanticized yet extremely compelling all the same. READ ME!
“[An] exquisitely accomplished first book. Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully, but Ms. Boo is not a novelist. She is one of those rare, deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction, a documentarian with a superb sense of human drama. She makes it very easy to forget that this book is the work of a reporter. …. Comparison to Dickens is not unwarranted.” -Janet Maslin, New York Times
Definitely suffering from Slumdog Millionaire detox. :)
ReplyDeleteI can imagine myself bawling as I read this book, and would happily do so. I feel like if an author can't pull any emotion from the reader, then they fail as a writer. Honestly, I love books that make me cry the most. :D
Moi aussi, Ashley :)
DeleteWe look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
-To a Skylark, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Loving the rhyme there Beatrice. 'Aussi' and 'Ashley', I never made that connection before. XD
DeleteThe poem is pretty, but I've never heard it before (the title sounds familiar though). :)
Is the message that 'with happiness there must be sadness' and vise-versa? It would certainly explain why I'm so happy when I cry after a sad book. XD
RANDOM COMMENT: I like your display picture of the bumblebee mushroom. :D