Behind the Beautiful Forevers
I mentioned last week that I’m reading some contemporaryaward-winning works to catch me up on more recent writing styles (as comparedwith the books mostly written before 1850 that I studied for my doctoralcomps). I started with this year’s Pulitzer winner, The Orphan Master’s Son. And this week I moved on to read thenonfiction winner of the National Book Award, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine (Kate) Boo.
Though this is Boo’s first book, she is no stranger to theworld of journalism and certainly no rookie reporter. In fact, she's a staffwriter at The New Yorker and a formerreporter and editor for The WashingtonPost with a reputation for writing about poor and disadvantaged people.
Thirteen years ago, Boo wrote a series for The Post about group homes for mentallyretarded people that won her the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The judgessaid her writing “disclosed wretched neglect and abuse in the city’s grouphomes for the mentally retarded, which forced officials to acknowledge the conditionsand begin reforms.”
In Behind theBeautiful Forevers, she continues writing about the poor and disadvantaged,but she changed her setting from D.C. to the slums of Mumbai. And the result issomething akin to “Dickens meets Dreiser in India.” Except—wait! The story'snot fiction. Yes, it's a murder mystery, but it really happened. And the readeractually knows who “done” it. The suspense comes in wondering what will happento the likable, falsely accused kid caught in the web of corruption that isMumbai's infrastructure.
Boo moved to India to live among her subjects for threeyears so she could conduct the sort of on-the-ground, in-person, documentedresearch that makes her narrative nonfiction so compelling. And although Boologged thousands of hours’ worth of interviews, she never interjects herselfinto the story. Consequently, Ramachandra Guha, author of India after Ghandi, described BeautifulForevers as “the best work of narrative nonfiction I’ve read in twenty-fiveyears.” At times in reading Boo's nonfiction, I had to remind myself that thestory really happened, because she so flawlessly weaved together her plot,dialogue, setting, and characterization.
The book's literary prose, filled with brilliant similes,helps the reader visualize the author's multifaceted characters. But I confessthat I had trouble at times keeping track of them all. And I also came awaydespairing a little, recognizing that no matter what we do to alleviate theplight of the poor, our methods are flawed because we must rely to a greatdegree on people. Boo writes about how a slumlord “tapped the largess of aprominent American Christian charity, World Vision” to get public toilets (52),seeming to suggest that WV helped empower a corrupt man. She told of a renegadeWV social worker who collected money and ran off with it (53). And shementioned WV clipboards intended as gifts for children that were hoarded by thesocial workers who were supposed to hand them out (66). So what do we do?Refuse to provide toilets or school supplies? Perhaps. (As someone who helpsprovide humanitarian aid, such questions are always on my mind.) But perhaps wedo risk/benefit ratios and determine to keep trying.
Despite the poverty, suffering, and seeming callousnessabout human life, Boo has provided a glimpse of India that's hopeful. Despiteits many despair-evoking scenes, Behindthe Beautiful Forevers shows that even with all the odds stacked againstthem, some people still long to be good. And, I would add, they know theirgovernment won't save them.
But then, neither can or does ours save us. Yes, I'mthankful that I live where I do—this book, like The Orphan Master's Son, made me even more grateful. But we mustnever trust in "chariots" or "horses" or governments if wetruly know in whom we have believed.