I feel like I have been to India. Katherine Boo is a journalist but has a novelist’s talent. She is a wonderful writer. That said, I couldn’t really “enjoy” the book because the lives being led are so bad and sad. There is fighting over very limited resources (think water and toilets) and especially garbage salvaging for what little can be sold and recycled. The slum dwellers lives are miserable, and they in turn make misery for others. Corruption is rampant on a small and grand scale, schools funded, teachers recruited but not qualified, records not kept. But Boo, who researched the book over several years, still sees hope for the people (especially the young) she writes about, although I swear I don’t know how.
