Call number
FIC ANA
Collection
Genres
Publication
Random House Trade Paperbacks (2021), 384 pages
Description
"Based on a true story--Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality police shows, thinks he's smarter than his friend Pari (even though she gets the best grades), and considers himself to be a better boss than Faiz (even though Faiz is the one with a job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit. But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and their fears of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. At times exuberant, at times heartbreaking, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line traces the unfolding of a tragedy while capturing the fierce warmth and resilience of a community forged in times of trouble"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
Ten-year-old Jai lives with his parents and sister Didi-Runu in the "basti" (slum neighborhood). His mother is a maid in the nearby luxury high rises ("hi fis") and he is friends with Pari, an extremely bright girl, and Faiza, a Muslim boy in a primarily Hindu neighborhood. One of Jai's favorite
The book is entirely told from the pov of Jai, and although he lives in dire poverty, he is an innocent who is still somehow able to maintain a sense of hope and joy, and the ability to take pleasure in the little things in life. The book very much reminded me of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which I read earlier this year. Although it is fictional, it is apparently based on a series of true events.
Recommended
3 stars
Show More
pastimes is watching detective shows on TV, and after one of their schoolmates from the basti goes missing, Jai and his friends decide to put their detecting skills to work. What starts out as a light and slightly humorous adventure story soon turns dark, however, as other basti children also start disappearing. The police refuse to take the disappearances seriously, especially since no one in the basti can afford the requisite bribe.The book is entirely told from the pov of Jai, and although he lives in dire poverty, he is an innocent who is still somehow able to maintain a sense of hope and joy, and the ability to take pleasure in the little things in life. The book very much reminded me of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which I read earlier this year. Although it is fictional, it is apparently based on a series of true events.
Recommended
3 stars
Show Less
LibraryThing member brangwinn
Perhaps it’s the reporter’s instinct for detail that makes this debut book so riveting. As a journalist, Anappara saw a lot of poor neighborhoods desperate for the return of missing and most likely exploited children. In her creation of a young child as the protagonist in this story, she has
Show More
created an observer not hindered by adult knowledge, one who sees the world through new eyes. Jai lives in a slum. He goes to school unwillingly, and for good reason—gangs, uncaring teachers and large classes. He‘s Hindi. One of his best friends is Muslim. His other best friend is a girl who excels in academics. His sister is involved in track and field at their school and hopes to be able to compete on the state level. As children disappear from the neighborhood, Jai and his two friends, become detectives hoping to discover what has happened to them. Local Hindis want to blame it on the Muslims, which turns out to be false, but puts undue pressure on the small Muslim population. As a children’s librarian, I’ve always been impressed by the unexpected, wise observations of children, and this book confirms my belief. Children can be keen observers of the word around them. Although the city is unnamed in the book, if you’ve read BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS you are familiar with the corrupt police forces, the conditions of slums, and the challenges of survival. This book puts a clear picture in the reader’s mind of the toll it takes on children. Show Less
LibraryThing member maryreinert
This book definitely got better as it went along. Set in a slum in a large Indian City, Jai is only a child, but is exposed to the worst the world can offer. He, his parents, and sister live near enough to the "hi-fi" apartments where his mother works as a servant in an apartment. Jai has two close
A schoolmate of Jai's strangely disappears and the corrupt police will do nothing. Soon another young boy disappears. Jai decides with the help of his friends to become a detective like the ones he sees on TV. They take many risks in their attempts to find out how has taken these children including stealing money from his mother so he can take the purple line train to another location.
After more young people disappear, the basti soon turns on the Muslims even after two young Muslim children disappear. Jai is looking at the world through the eyes of a child, but sees so much he does not comprehend. It's only when his sister disappears, that he begins to understand the seriousness of what is happening.
This book is definitely well-written and allows the reader a view into life in the slums. Jai is fortunate to have loving parents even though their expression of love is often different than what we as white Americans would condone.
It took me a while to get into this as there are so many Indian terms and words. Furthermore, about half of the book has somewhat of a tone of a "Hardy Boys" adventure book as the children have adventures in their city. Almost all of the book is written from the perspective of Jai. However, there are short chapters which place the children who are taken in the location of their disappearance - this was very effective without ever being outright brutal - implication is far stronger.
The ending of this book is worth the entire read. Hard to imagine that such things are actually occurring in the world, but as the afterword states, the situation of this story is not unrealistic. This book got a lot of praise and I can see why.
Show More
friends, Pari, a very smart girl who loves to study, and Faiz, one of the few Muslim boys in their basti. A schoolmate of Jai's strangely disappears and the corrupt police will do nothing. Soon another young boy disappears. Jai decides with the help of his friends to become a detective like the ones he sees on TV. They take many risks in their attempts to find out how has taken these children including stealing money from his mother so he can take the purple line train to another location.
After more young people disappear, the basti soon turns on the Muslims even after two young Muslim children disappear. Jai is looking at the world through the eyes of a child, but sees so much he does not comprehend. It's only when his sister disappears, that he begins to understand the seriousness of what is happening.
This book is definitely well-written and allows the reader a view into life in the slums. Jai is fortunate to have loving parents even though their expression of love is often different than what we as white Americans would condone.
It took me a while to get into this as there are so many Indian terms and words. Furthermore, about half of the book has somewhat of a tone of a "Hardy Boys" adventure book as the children have adventures in their city. Almost all of the book is written from the perspective of Jai. However, there are short chapters which place the children who are taken in the location of their disappearance - this was very effective without ever being outright brutal - implication is far stronger.
The ending of this book is worth the entire read. Hard to imagine that such things are actually occurring in the world, but as the afterword states, the situation of this story is not unrealistic. This book got a lot of praise and I can see why.
Show Less
LibraryThing member davidroche
There’s been a lot of buzz around Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Chatto & Windus), the debut novel from the journalist Deepa Anappara. The story is told through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy, brought up in a shanty town, who with his 2 friends turns detective when children start disappearing.
Show More
It’s well crafted, engaging and has clever and sympathetic characters and voices where quick minds and street nous strive to overcome poverty and hardship. I was completely absorbed with the personalities and voices. Show Less
LibraryThing member miss.mesmerized
When Bahadur, one of his classmates, goes missing, nine-year-old Jai is determined to solve this case. He has watched so many episodes of Police Patrol that he knows exactly how such a problem is to be treated. Together with his friends Pari and Faiz, he starts to investigate around Purple Line and
Deepa Anappara’s novel is a brilliant mixture of an oftentimes very funny plot and an absolutely serious topic. Daily, children go missing on Delhi’s streets without anybody taking notice of it. The life of a child, especially if she or he belongs to a minority, is worth next to nothing, not even the effort to take a note on it. Diverse cultures and religious racism play an important role in this, too. Boys and girls are treated differently and offered different chances in life. Born into the wrong family, you can only count on superstition for a better life since the boundaries are clearly set.
At the beginning of the novel, I totally adored Jai and his friends. They are vividly and wonderfully portrayed. Determined to find out what happened to their friend and equipped with their knowledge from true crime TV series, they start their investigation ignoring all warnings against the dangers that lurk around the bazaar. They take their job very serious and at the same time, just as kids do, ignore the facts that they live in the same slum but come from very different backgrounds.
With the number of children who disappear rising, the novel becomes increasingly serious and loses the light-heartedness of the beginning. The way a slum works becomes gradually more visible and thus, the novel grants insight in a world which is totally unknown to me.
The whole novel is sparkling with life, the characters are quite unique and lovable and it is totally understandable why the novel has been nominated on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020.
Show More
Bhoot Bazaar. Yet, more and more children and teenagers disappear from their basti and quite obviously, the police are not willing to do anything about it. The parents get either more and more afraid of their children being the next or angry as they feel helpless and powerless. Deepa Anappara’s novel is a brilliant mixture of an oftentimes very funny plot and an absolutely serious topic. Daily, children go missing on Delhi’s streets without anybody taking notice of it. The life of a child, especially if she or he belongs to a minority, is worth next to nothing, not even the effort to take a note on it. Diverse cultures and religious racism play an important role in this, too. Boys and girls are treated differently and offered different chances in life. Born into the wrong family, you can only count on superstition for a better life since the boundaries are clearly set.
At the beginning of the novel, I totally adored Jai and his friends. They are vividly and wonderfully portrayed. Determined to find out what happened to their friend and equipped with their knowledge from true crime TV series, they start their investigation ignoring all warnings against the dangers that lurk around the bazaar. They take their job very serious and at the same time, just as kids do, ignore the facts that they live in the same slum but come from very different backgrounds.
With the number of children who disappear rising, the novel becomes increasingly serious and loses the light-heartedness of the beginning. The way a slum works becomes gradually more visible and thus, the novel grants insight in a world which is totally unknown to me.
The whole novel is sparkling with life, the characters are quite unique and lovable and it is totally understandable why the novel has been nominated on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Twink
I always enjoy checking out lists of publisher recommended reads. I often find a hidden jewel I wouldn't have found on my own. Such is the case with Deepa Anappara's debut novel Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.
Djinn: "An intelligent spirit of lower rank than the angels, able to appear in human and
Jai is nine years old and lives with his parents and older sister in a tin roofed home in the slums and shadow of wealthy high rises in a large Indian city. When a child from his school goes missing and the police are completely indifferent and uninterested, Jai decides to look for him with the help of his two friends.
Initially, I found the narrative to be somewhat light hearted. Jai uses his detective skills learned from his favorite television show. The banter between the friends is clever. Jai seems to be always in trouble with his family, teacher and neighbors. But things start to take on another note and a darker tone when another child goes missing. And the same indifference is employed from those 'above' the residents of this shanty town.
Jai's voice was wonderful - quick, sharp-witted, knowing, but still innocent, despite living a life we Westerners would view as deprived. He is greatly loved by his family and friends, is kind and caring with a roguish streak. I liked him very much.
The setting is so well described - I could feel the heat, smell the spices and hear the aunties complaining. The setting is just as much a character in the book. It dictates the direction the plot takes. And it goes places I didn't want it to. On reading the author's notes, I learned that Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line was based on actual events in India. Anappara was a journalist in India for many years, reporting on children's issues. That knowledge and experience brings the book alive.
I laughed and yes, I cried. But I truly enjoyed this book. (And learned quite a bit)
A statistic from Anappara's research: 180 children go missing each day in India. Only 1 in 3 will ever be found.
Djinn: "An intelligent spirit of lower rank than the angels, able to appear in human and
Show More
animal forms and to possess humans."Jai is nine years old and lives with his parents and older sister in a tin roofed home in the slums and shadow of wealthy high rises in a large Indian city. When a child from his school goes missing and the police are completely indifferent and uninterested, Jai decides to look for him with the help of his two friends.
Initially, I found the narrative to be somewhat light hearted. Jai uses his detective skills learned from his favorite television show. The banter between the friends is clever. Jai seems to be always in trouble with his family, teacher and neighbors. But things start to take on another note and a darker tone when another child goes missing. And the same indifference is employed from those 'above' the residents of this shanty town.
Jai's voice was wonderful - quick, sharp-witted, knowing, but still innocent, despite living a life we Westerners would view as deprived. He is greatly loved by his family and friends, is kind and caring with a roguish streak. I liked him very much.
The setting is so well described - I could feel the heat, smell the spices and hear the aunties complaining. The setting is just as much a character in the book. It dictates the direction the plot takes. And it goes places I didn't want it to. On reading the author's notes, I learned that Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line was based on actual events in India. Anappara was a journalist in India for many years, reporting on children's issues. That knowledge and experience brings the book alive.
I laughed and yes, I cried. But I truly enjoyed this book. (And learned quite a bit)
A statistic from Anappara's research: 180 children go missing each day in India. Only 1 in 3 will ever be found.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
I reserved this book at the library back in March, so when a copy was finally delivered, I had almost forgotten why I wanted to read it in the first place! Possibly because of the dazzling retro-style cover - I am that shallow.
With other borrowers waiting, I hoped this would be a quick read -
The plot, centred around a young boy and his friends living in a 'basti' or slum in India who decide to investigate the disappearance of local children, unfolds slowly, describing the different levels of poverty in the region. The police ignore the concerned parents, threatening to bulldoze their shacks if they make a fuss, so Jai becomes a detective based on knowledge gained from police programmes on TV. His family are poor but loving, whereas the first boy to go missing has an abusive father and the second is forced to support his father's business ironing clothes. A teenage girl goes missing and reputation is torn to shreds by rumours. A gang of Hindu men blame the Muslims and the elder brother of Jai's friend Faiz is arrested, stirring religious tension in the community. I really got a sense of the characters as people and not caricatures, and Jai's narration probably did help with that, but he still bugged me! His childish list of suspects and interpretation of events also came close to the truth while at the same time somehow diminishing the impact of what was happening, until the final few chapters.
A powerful story with a puny narrator - sorry, Jai!
With other borrowers waiting, I hoped this would be a quick read -
Show More
hardback, large print, only 340 pages - but ploughing through still took four days. The social background of the story was enlightening, to say the least, describing the slums of India, and the mystery of the disappearing children was both gripping and grim - but telling the story through a nine year old boy's eyes just didn't sit right with the events of the book for me. I understand and applaud the author's intentions, and using a child to describe to adult cruelty and social injustice has been tried and tested as a narrative device - take a bow, Harper Lee - but Jai was just so bloody infuriating! Any other child - his sister Runu or clever Pari - would have worked better. The chapters told from the perspective of the missing children (in good old third person) were like a reward for persevering. The plot, centred around a young boy and his friends living in a 'basti' or slum in India who decide to investigate the disappearance of local children, unfolds slowly, describing the different levels of poverty in the region. The police ignore the concerned parents, threatening to bulldoze their shacks if they make a fuss, so Jai becomes a detective based on knowledge gained from police programmes on TV. His family are poor but loving, whereas the first boy to go missing has an abusive father and the second is forced to support his father's business ironing clothes. A teenage girl goes missing and reputation is torn to shreds by rumours. A gang of Hindu men blame the Muslims and the elder brother of Jai's friend Faiz is arrested, stirring religious tension in the community. I really got a sense of the characters as people and not caricatures, and Jai's narration probably did help with that, but he still bugged me! His childish list of suspects and interpretation of events also came close to the truth while at the same time somehow diminishing the impact of what was happening, until the final few chapters.
A powerful story with a puny narrator - sorry, Jai!
Show Less
LibraryThing member gypsysmom
The whole time I was reading this book I kept thinking of another book. That other book was Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a nonfiction expose of life in a slum in Mumbai. That was a disturbing read and this one, which is fiction, was also disturbing but the ending gave me a more optimistic feeling
Jai is a nine year old who is obsessed with police shows on TV. So when a boy from his class does not return home and the police don't do anything except to threaten to bulldoze the entire slum Jai decides to become a detective. He enlists his two best friends, Pari (the smartest person in his class) and Faiz (one of the few Muslims in his class). Jai even gets one of the slum dogs to act as a tracker. Then another child goes missing and soon after a 16 year old girl doesn't come home from the bazaar where she works. Hindu extremists decide the Muslims are kidnapping these children and start attacking Muslims in the neighbourhood. The police finally arrest some people all Muslim including Faiz's older brother. When two Muslim siblings disappear it should have resulted in the Muslims release but does not.
The author was a journalist in India and often spent time in slums like this one. She says she "interviewed children who worked as scavengers or begged at traffic junctions, who struggled to study at home because of their difficult domestic circumstances, and who had to drop out of school after being displaced by religious violence. But most of them didn't present themselves to me as victims; they were cheeky and funny and often impatient in the face of my questions." The disappearance of children is widespread in India. "As many as 180 children are said to go missing in India every day." That's the factual underpinning of this book but the first person narrative of Jai makes the story come alive. We in North America have no idea how lucky we are.
Show More
than Behind the Beautiful Forevers did. Still I couldn't help thinking how awful it would have been in these slums with COVID-19 raging through all of India.Jai is a nine year old who is obsessed with police shows on TV. So when a boy from his class does not return home and the police don't do anything except to threaten to bulldoze the entire slum Jai decides to become a detective. He enlists his two best friends, Pari (the smartest person in his class) and Faiz (one of the few Muslims in his class). Jai even gets one of the slum dogs to act as a tracker. Then another child goes missing and soon after a 16 year old girl doesn't come home from the bazaar where she works. Hindu extremists decide the Muslims are kidnapping these children and start attacking Muslims in the neighbourhood. The police finally arrest some people all Muslim including Faiz's older brother. When two Muslim siblings disappear it should have resulted in the Muslims release but does not.
The author was a journalist in India and often spent time in slums like this one. She says she "interviewed children who worked as scavengers or begged at traffic junctions, who struggled to study at home because of their difficult domestic circumstances, and who had to drop out of school after being displaced by religious violence. But most of them didn't present themselves to me as victims; they were cheeky and funny and often impatient in the face of my questions." The disappearance of children is widespread in India. "As many as 180 children are said to go missing in India every day." That's the factual underpinning of this book but the first person narrative of Jai makes the story come alive. We in North America have no idea how lucky we are.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Romonko
This novel won the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Novel. I admit that it was interesting because I received a front-row seat to observe what life might be like in a poor Indian settlement. Jai and his friends Fiaz and Pari are all about 9 or 10 years old. Children begin disappearing from the area where
Show More
they live. No one, especially not the police, is interested in looking for a 10-year old boy that has disappeared mysteriously. When his friend disappears too, and then a 16-year-old girl and two Muslin twins, it doesn't make any difference to the police and they still don't investigate. Finally, families that have lost loved ones take action, and they are finally being heard. During all this time the three friends are "investigating" what happened to all the missing children. They find themselves in some danger, and when Jai's 12-year-old sister disappears the whole neighbtourhood is in an uproar. The book is written fairly well, but I found it difficult wading through all the foreign terms and language, and all the background noise that was going on all the time in the book, I found I was having trouble following along. Once a book becomes difficult for me to pick up for whatever reason, the author has lost me. I found myself floundering quite a bit during this book. Ms. Anappara's characterization is actually very well done. This being her first novel, that surprised me a bit, and that may have been what made this book win the best novel award. I felt that I got to know little Jai, and I personally experienced some of the anguish that he was going through. According to Ms. Anappora's Afterword, missing children from these poor settlements are very, very common, and the cases are rarely solved. I am pleased to close the covers on this one. My head is still ringing with all the conversations, noises and disturbances. Show Less
LibraryThing member Amzzz
When children start going missing from their basti, Jai and his friends decide to investigate. The storytelling was somewhat remniscient of To Kill A Mockingbird - we see very complex adult issues unfolding through the eyes of a child. The ending was unsatisfying but I think that works with the
Show More
book. It took a while for me to get into the flow as there is quite a bit of Indian language used. Show Less
LibraryThing member richardderus
I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.
My Review: One of my take-aways from living through the twenty-first century as an immigrant to its reality is that there are a *shocking* number of souls that just...vanish...with no explanation, no investigation, and no closure for their families or
That being an unanswerable question without delving into immense mountains of sociopolitical research and studies, I'll go to the next part of the issue raised in the story: Caste and sectarian animosities and prejudices come in for scary, extra-believable spotlighting in here. It's like the awfulness I really wasn't privy to before Katherine Boo's book came out (whatever the criticisms Boo gets, I for one hadn't heard anything about these issues before I read it) sprang to life in the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. He's the only one who cares that Bahadur has gone missing...as much, that is, as the child's mother cares.
Very much raised by TV while being resentfully and carelessly monitored by his gifted older sister (a quietly important strand is the terrible, sexist manner that the capitalist system exacerbates her mistreatment, the not terribly bright but terribly endearingly bumptious and energetic Jai gets a scooby-group of kids together to seek out Bahadur. What unfolds is proof that kids are great narrators, if lousy cops. The scooby-group is convinced (well, two-thirds convinced) that there's a Djinn on the eponymous Purple Line of the city's subway. No, there isn't; if you came hoping for a fantasy read, go in peace. What they do discover is, however, very relevant.
There are things in the telling of the story that didn't work well to make it into a satisfying read: The neglected sister who watches Jai does something that removes her from sympathy to distaste. It's not pretty, it was perfectly understandable, but it actually made the central search more complicated and showed that adolescents are not the best choices of parent subsitiutes. The final solution of the mystery at the heart of the book is desperately sad; it's also not what was signaled as one of the book's themes, the complicity of the capitalist world in the destruction of families and ways of life, as well as exacerbating the existing sectarian horrors plaguing India. In my view, this was a narrative error, since it took the wind out of the sails of at least half the book's points. And, perhaps most tellingly, the multiplicity of narrative voices was less an enrichment of the story than a lessening of tension. This is very often the case in crime fiction.
This explains a lot of why this carefully crafted and involvingly told story didn't get all five stars from me.
What was so enriching in this read was the manner of making evident the luxury of a safe, secure childhood anywhere not already rich. What made me think the hardest was the additional, personal light shone on the family of a disappeared child, the struggles of parenting while extremely poor, the harshness of communities that, under threat, are coldly calculatedly indifferent in their actions if not always their hearts...they simply can't afford to be fully realized communities such as existed before capitalism fastened its teeth in India's neck.
My Review: One of my take-aways from living through the twenty-first century as an immigrant to its reality is that there are a *shocking* number of souls that just...vanish...with no explanation, no investigation, and no closure for their families or
Show More
friends. Author Anappara knows this...she is a journalist, she hears the howls. The question I have is the same one I had when the Ciudad Juárez femicides first came to light: What the actual fuck are the police doing?That being an unanswerable question without delving into immense mountains of sociopolitical research and studies, I'll go to the next part of the issue raised in the story: Caste and sectarian animosities and prejudices come in for scary, extra-believable spotlighting in here. It's like the awfulness I really wasn't privy to before Katherine Boo's book came out (whatever the criticisms Boo gets, I for one hadn't heard anything about these issues before I read it) sprang to life in the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. He's the only one who cares that Bahadur has gone missing...as much, that is, as the child's mother cares.
Very much raised by TV while being resentfully and carelessly monitored by his gifted older sister (a quietly important strand is the terrible, sexist manner that the capitalist system exacerbates her mistreatment, the not terribly bright but terribly endearingly bumptious and energetic Jai gets a scooby-group of kids together to seek out Bahadur. What unfolds is proof that kids are great narrators, if lousy cops. The scooby-group is convinced (well, two-thirds convinced) that there's a Djinn on the eponymous Purple Line of the city's subway. No, there isn't; if you came hoping for a fantasy read, go in peace. What they do discover is, however, very relevant.
There are things in the telling of the story that didn't work well to make it into a satisfying read: The neglected sister who watches Jai does something that removes her from sympathy to distaste. It's not pretty, it was perfectly understandable, but it actually made the central search more complicated and showed that adolescents are not the best choices of parent subsitiutes. The final solution of the mystery at the heart of the book is desperately sad; it's also not what was signaled as one of the book's themes, the complicity of the capitalist world in the destruction of families and ways of life, as well as exacerbating the existing sectarian horrors plaguing India. In my view, this was a narrative error, since it took the wind out of the sails of at least half the book's points. And, perhaps most tellingly, the multiplicity of narrative voices was less an enrichment of the story than a lessening of tension. This is very often the case in crime fiction.
This explains a lot of why this carefully crafted and involvingly told story didn't get all five stars from me.
What was so enriching in this read was the manner of making evident the luxury of a safe, secure childhood anywhere not already rich. What made me think the hardest was the additional, personal light shone on the family of a disappeared child, the struggles of parenting while extremely poor, the harshness of communities that, under threat, are coldly calculatedly indifferent in their actions if not always their hearts...they simply can't afford to be fully realized communities such as existed before capitalism fastened its teeth in India's neck.
Show Less
LibraryThing member burritapal
This was good for the sense of what daily life is like in a settlement in a Metropolitan area of India. Never specified where in india, the characters live in an area that has no water in the houses, and there is only one bathroom, that charges to get in, to serve ~200 homes. Because of needing to
Children from the settlement begin to disappear, and the 9-year-old protagonist, who likes to watch TV crime shows, thinks he and his friends can solve the crime. The police, who claim a weekly shakedown from the residents, feel like it's not their problem. After all, as one of the mothers if a disappeared child finds out, the cops think the residents deserve what they get, because they're poor.
Hardback 2020 Random House
P.211:
" 'but those animals beat me here' - Chandni's ma touches her neck - 'here' - she twists her left hand to touch her back, just below her blouse and above her sari skirt - 'and here too.' Now she touches her legs. 'I asked them why they're not looking for my child, and they said, 'we're your servants or what?' They asked me, 'why do you people pop out kids like rats when you can't take care of them? We'll be doing the world a favor if we wipe out your slum.' "
The cops constantly threaten to have their settlement bulldozed.
More children keep disappearing, and the ugly theme of differences in religion raises its head. Instead of doing something about stopping the abduction of children, the Hindus of the settlement are encouraged to blame them on the few muslim families residing there.
Though this is fiction, it was written by a journalist who reported and lived in India for years, so it reads true. The disappointment I had in finishing the book, was that I felt like there was no real ending.
Show More
wait in line to "go," many do their business in a rubbish area that separates their settlement from a series of high-rise apartment buildings. Children from the settlement begin to disappear, and the 9-year-old protagonist, who likes to watch TV crime shows, thinks he and his friends can solve the crime. The police, who claim a weekly shakedown from the residents, feel like it's not their problem. After all, as one of the mothers if a disappeared child finds out, the cops think the residents deserve what they get, because they're poor.
Hardback 2020 Random House
P.211:
" 'but those animals beat me here' - Chandni's ma touches her neck - 'here' - she twists her left hand to touch her back, just below her blouse and above her sari skirt - 'and here too.' Now she touches her legs. 'I asked them why they're not looking for my child, and they said, 'we're your servants or what?' They asked me, 'why do you people pop out kids like rats when you can't take care of them? We'll be doing the world a favor if we wipe out your slum.' "
The cops constantly threaten to have their settlement bulldozed.
More children keep disappearing, and the ugly theme of differences in religion raises its head. Instead of doing something about stopping the abduction of children, the Hindus of the settlement are encouraged to blame them on the few muslim families residing there.
Though this is fiction, it was written by a journalist who reported and lived in India for years, so it reads true. The disappointment I had in finishing the book, was that I felt like there was no real ending.
Show Less
LibraryThing member markm2315
Show More
unusually entertaining. Then the tragic ending surprised me. The author's afterward specifically states that he wrote a fictionalized account of a common problem in Indian slums and that he specifically created the children's characters to reflect those of the poor children he had encountered in India: cheeky, funny, and impatient. Also, this book has a glossary of Indian terms at the end. Since I was reading an e-book, I didn't realize that the glossary was there. I guess I was an idiot.
Show Less
Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2020)
Edgar Award (Nominee — Novel — 2021)
Macavity Award (Nominee — 2021)
Authors' Club First Novel Award (Longlist — 2021)
McKitterick Prize (Runner-up — 2021)
The Kitschies (Finalist — 2020)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2021)
NPR: Books We Love (2020)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction — 2020)
ISBN
0593129288 / 9780593129289