Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
By Katherine Boo
(Random House, Hardcover, 9781400067558, 288pp.)
Publication Date: February 7, 2012
Everyone already knows this book is fantastic. I am very late to the table on this, but the way she describes poverty in this Mumbai slum is real. That seems like an obvious thing, but it is not. It is a feat that very few non-fiction writers have accomplished. It isn’t descriptions, scenery, voices, or characters that made this so extraordinary, it is the way of thinking. Katherine Boo understands the people she is writing about. As a reader, you know this the same way you know that you will still love your family tomorrow. The best part is that she transfers some of that understanding to you. Not all perhaps, but as much as book can.
I couldn’t help but compare this way of understanding to the somehow just not quite right understanding of a book from a very, very different place and people: Barbara Ehrenreich’s NICKEL AND DIMED. Ehrenreich does the best she can and her work absolutely put good into the world, but something was just not complete. Perhaps this is because I know the world of NICKEL AND DIMED, but I do not know the world of Annawadi. Surely Katherine Boo is not such a miracle, but I am going to believe she is all the same.
By the way, Katherine Boo also did an outstanding piece in The New Yorker years ago about state-sponsored marriage seminars for housing project inhabitants in Oklahoma.
– Editor
UPDATE 4/13/14: I went to see her speak at the Brooklyn Public Library today. She really is incredible. I babbled at her like a fool after swearing I wouldn’t, but it was worth the embarrassment. The most important lesson she taught us: take your time.