This 2008 National Book Award finalist has been on my list for a very, very long time. A local high school selected it as their number one book this year, which was the impetus to finally get around to it. A verse novel (blank verse), it was a quick read, but it was not an easy one. The story is that of Lakshmi, a thirteen year-old girl from a mountain village in Nepal, who thinks she is going to the city as a house-maid to earn money for her impoverished family. Instead, she is taken across the border to Calcutta, and is kept in a brothel from which there is no escape. I could have read the book in a single sitting or two, but I spread it out over a week, as I had to "take a break" now and then. There are not words for how devastating this is. Lakshmi is a girl with a spark, and that spark is all but put out. She is a child, and, throughout it all, she craves the things a child would -- a friend, a hug, a kind word, but in the end, there is a part of her which is forever changed. What makes this especially hard is that Lakshmi is fiction, but her story is not. End notes say that this happens to some 12,000 Nepalese children a year, and more than 500,000 girls worldwide. The novel made me ache in much the same way as when I watched the film "Beasts of No Nation". We know these kinds of things happen in the world -- why can't we stop it? The difficulty of the subject matter is mitigated, somewhat, by the verse style, and by Lakshmi's spirit. It is this inner voice which calls to the reader and undoubtably made this a top pick for the students who selected it. It is what makes this book great. But seriously, get some kleenex. Then, find a charity that addresses this horror, and give some money to it.
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