Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (2012) by Katherine Boo. The most startling thing about this story of life in a slum in India is that it is largely true. Boo lived in India after marrying an Indian man, and did hundreds of hours of research in the very slum in which the book takes place. The lives of these slumdwellers are remarkable in their tawdriness, verging on incomprehensible for an American who doesn't live in a hut near a sewage lagoon. The detail is fascinating, and at the same time repellent. The people who live here are driven to near-madness by the conditions they are forced to endure. It's a good book, perhaps even a necessary one, but it sure is depressing. Grade: A-