Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo - Book Review

Well this was a bookclub book and it is a very confronting book.  Katherine Boo immerses herself in a slum in India and has produced this novel to show how world events can radically change people's lives - even the poorest people of the world.  She highlights the corruption, betrayal and devastation that exist in this world and the lack of hope, and ability to make decisions to change their lot that the poor have.

Having spent some time myself visiting slums in India with an aid organisation, I did find this quite a confronting book to read.  

There are some difficulties with this as a non-fiction book in that Boo takes us into the thoughts of the people who are living in the slums, leaving a seed of doubt as to how she could know the inner workings of their minds.  That being said, I think she has done a good job of highlighting the corruption that does exist in India (and probably many other third world countries)and the powerlessness of the world's poor.

A great insight to this desperate and hopeless world.