My Never Ending List

Written in free verse this story leaves the innocence behind and awakes in Lakshmi a darken world.  Raised in Nepal, her life is centered on the rice plants, tending to her goat and family chores. When money gets tight, thirteen year old Lakshmi gets sold and what she visions for her future is not what is truly in store for her. Thinking that she is going to the city to become a maid, her mother tells her the proper rules so Lakshmi will be a proud example for the family back home but this job is not what her future holds. As her father bargains the fair price for his own daughter, I just cringed at the thought of doing so for my child.  Lakshmi passed through many hands before finding herself in The Happiness House ran by Mumtaz.  When she realizes she is now housed in a brothel and must stay to repay her family’s debt, Lakshmi refuses to comply.  Drawing strength from her past she is able to handle the punishment bestowed upon her by Mumtaz but the old woman is not backing down.  It’s a fight between Lakshmi and Mumtaz and they are both pulling at each other’s strings.

To think a book with this topic, emotion and energy is written in free verse would work, amazed me.  Determination, vigor, and not a bit sappy on the voice of the characters as her world were crumbling around her.  So many great passages in the book that as I read them, I stopped and reread them, letting the words flow endlessly.  As she is raped, being drugged and handled repeatedly, you feel the disconnected she had with the whole affair. She shut down. Each of the other girls she meets at the brothel, they have their own stories and she does not judge them or look down upon them.  It’s a book that will open your eyes and see the world as it really is.

“Sometimes I see a girl show is growing into womanhood. Other days I see a girl growing old before her time. It doesn’t matter, of course.  Because no one will ever want me now.”