Behind The Beautiful Forevers
by Katherine Boo
- Percentage of approved critics who have given this book a positive review.
Critic Rating
87%
Critic Reviews: 40
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- User rating from iDreamBooks & iTunes
Reader Rating
81%
Reader Ratings: 620
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Synopsis
An instant, critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller. In the tradition of Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo's landmark work of narrative nonfiction about families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great global cities: Mumbai, India. As India begins to prosper, the residents of Annawadi, a makeshift settlement near the Mumbai airport,... more
About Katherine Boo
Published: February 19, 2013 by Random House Trade Paperbacks
Genre: History, Political & Social Sciences. Non-fiction. 288 pages
- All Critics: 40
- Positive: 36
- Negative: 4
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The Washington Post | 10 Feb 2012
Her research is meticulous and worthy of the most demanding sociologist;
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The New York Times | 9 Feb 2012
. . .provides a bracing antidote to the ideological opiates of recent decades — those that made the worldwide proliferation of gray zones appear part of a “great success narrative.”
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Chicago Tribune | 11 May 2012
It is a book that needs to be passed along to be read and reread by all of us.
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USA Today | 6 Feb 2012
Beautiful brings alive an almost unimaginably harsh world through the stories of individuals trying to make their way in a place few of us can imagine.
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Beyond Brics (Finanical Times) | 30 Mar 2012
. . .a compelling portrait of the lives – and deaths – of the vast majority of modern Indians.
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Kirkus Reviews | 1 Dec 2011
The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.
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Boston.com | 5 Feb 2012
. . .an astoundingly honest, nonexploitative piece of journalism, a humane, powerful and insightful book. . .
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Chicago Tribune | 4 May 2012
Ultimately. . .this is a inspiring book,
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Dallas News | 29 Feb 2012
. . .a restrained and fine writer who has honed her reporting skills to a level that it is easy to forget you are reading nonfiction.
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The New York Times | 30 Jan 2012
She is one of those rare, deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction. . .
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The Star | 25 Feb 2012
. . .one of the most remarkable elements of the book is the way we are taken inside the daily lives of the slum’s residents,
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Business Week | 2 Feb 2012
The reader yearns for context in a study of this size, yet Boo does not provide this in a coherent way.
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Oprah.com
This is one stunning piece of narrative nonfiction. . .
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Review (Barnes & Noble) | 10 Feb 2012
"if a reader comes away…thinking of them only as pathetic socioeconomic specimens I'll have failed as a writer." She has not failed.
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Wall Street Journal | 10 Feb 2012
. . .the minutiae of many jobs, including sorting garbage, is something that even when closely observed and thoughtfully written about, doesn’t at all times make for riveting or insightful reading.
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Star Tribune | 11 Feb 2012
When publishers send bound galleys along to reviewers, they slip in acclamatory publicity sheets. . .the one folded into. . ."Behind the Beautiful Forevers". . . while lauding plenty, claims far too little.
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Slate | 6 Feb 2012
. . .Boo. . .has many ways of illuminating the people she writes about. . .You can feel the richness of her affection in her ironic appreciation of their oddities.
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Entertainment Weekly | 10 Feb 2012
Right now the book is sitting on my shelf making all the other books feel stupid.
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The Oxonian Review
The book is meticulously researched and demonstrates acute insight into the culture and languages of India.
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Cleveland.com | 5 Feb 2012
. . .thanks to her careful, nuanced perception of the complex individuals living in "a single, unexceptional slum," the book doesn't devolve into poverty porn.
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The Washington Times | 26 Mar 2012
Rather than fleshing out an argument as to how to solve the problems of Annawadi, she is content to explain the facts. . .
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The Sydney Morning Herald | 17 Mar 2012
. . .a great example of the power of what used to be known as immersion journalism. And a cracking read.
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The Daily Beast | 27 Feb 2012
That sort of empathy for the poor is in short supply. . . but without it, we won’t come close to understanding the depth of the poverty problem every globalized nation—including the United States—needs to address.
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Huffington Post | 27 Mar 2012
One comes away with admiration for these people whose lives she recounts.
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The Nation | 17 Apr 2012
Boo succeeds where so many reporters have failed because she has given the people of the undercity the same time and attention they would have received had they been residents of the overcity.
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Christian Science Monitor | 20 Feb 2012
. . .pure, astonishing reportage with as un-biased a lens as possible. . .
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The Wall Street Journal | 4 Feb 2012
. . .a vivid account of a self-contained but fragile universe tossed about by the storms of the outside world. . .
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Herald Sun | 25 Feb 2012
A beautifully written, at times funny tale that is even more moving because it's true.
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Columbia Journalism Review
. . .a deeply humane chronicle of a set of varied minds wearied by instability, and inventing ways through it.
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Seattle Times | 12 Feb 2012
Boo's writing skills are such that she can render even a dirty slum lovely. . .and on a deeper level, extract sublime irony from a seemingly straightforward news story.
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The New Republic | 8 Feb 2012
Boo, who spent significant time in Annawadi, makes no effort to assist her readers in making judgments.
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The Economist | 18 Feb 2012
Ms Boo blames “government priorities and market imperatives,” which “create a world so capricious that to help a neighbour is to risk your ability to feed your family.” But this feels thin. Mumbai’s poverty is not new.
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St. Louis Today | 25 Feb 2012
Exquisite in every detail. . .
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Publishers Weekly | 17 Oct 2011
Boo’s rigorous inquiry and transcendent prose leave an indelible impression of human beings behind the shibboleths of the New India.
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The Star | 25 Feb 2012
Beautiful Forevers is an extraordinary work of journalism. Gripping, heartbreaking, penetrating and respectful. It will open your eyes.
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The New York Times | 9 Feb 2012
Transcending its geographical setting, the book also provides a bracing antidote to the ideological opiates of recent decades — those that made the worldwide proliferation of gray zones appear part of a “great success narrative.”
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http://query.nytimes.com | 31 Jan 2012
She writes about so many scavenging kids, boisterously quarrelsome families and corrupt officials that the book is too crowded.
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The Guardian | 29 Jun 2012
Boo, in letting go of her story, in dwelling with it relatively briefly in her book's 250 pages (in contrast to the years she spent with the slum-dwellers), allows it to resonate with us as a small classic of contemporary writing.
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The Guardian | 22 Jun 2012
...Boo writes beautifully and, given her subject, surprisingly wittily. She is also wonderfully observant of human quirks...
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National Post | 13 Apr 2012
...Behind the Beautiful Forevers is driven by Annawadi’s central and overriding tragedy: The slum dwellers could never rise up as a collective against the Man, because the Man is not a presiding villain....
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