Vintage Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line: Discover the immersive novel longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2020

I bought it on the basis of reviews in the papers which were very complementary (although IIRC either the Telegraph or Times were a bit dismissive about it "pandering" to an Indian market - as if apparently 1.2bn Indians are less worth selling books to than 400m or so Brits and Americans.)Anyhow, what a superb piece of storytelling, and what a powerful book. Told from the perspective of a 9 year old boy living with his family in a slum in an unnamed Indian city, it tells the story of life in the slum (or Basti) where everybody is trying to survive, or thrive, or connive for themselves, or escape, in various measures - against which background children start to go missing. The story is always told from the perspective of either Jai, or in intermissions from the missing children, but we never really know what's happened to them, how how the story will play out until the end.Darker, in a stranger world, but it reminded me somewhat of a book from my childhood The Otterbury Incident. Well written, I have one slight complaint about it, which is that it would really benefit from a vocabulary in the back as a lot of (I'm sure authentic) local terminology is used that I struggled to always follow, but even despite that weakness, it was a remarkable read. Could *perhaps* be read by young adults as well, but certainly not anybody as young as the central character, Jai.

Jai, nine years old, and his friends Pari – a bright girl – and Faiz – a Moslem - live in a slum area from which children mysteriously go missing. They set out to act as detectives, seeking a solution. The purple line of the title is a railway line generally off limits for the trio. It plays only a small part in the story. The book’s opening chapter gripped my attention, but overall the book failed to retain it. Deepa Anappara’s Afterword explains what brought her to write the book. The depiction of life in the slum is mixed – at times a little too graphic but full of empathy on the part of the author. I was disappointed with the change of pace: the final disclosures were a little too rushed, leaving the central characters somewhat downplayed. There are parts of the book which justify the plaudits in the blurb, but overall I found it disappointing, given my high expectations.

This book was a glimpse into the life of a child in one of India's slums, a voice from a place where we are so often shown the conditions but so rarely hear the voices from within. The feelings of powerlessness are skilfully conveyed by the author who uses the child's voice to amplify the fact that, just like a child's voice, the residents of the slum are often ignored or dismissed. The book cleverly picks out the individual hopes and fears of a community often viewed as a homogeneous mass of people in need of our collective concern. We experience the frustration of the life that girls are expected to lead despite their dreams, the hardships faced by children wanting to learn but being relied on by their families to provide and the real fear for their lives that these communities feel daily. The poor are a commodity to be used, whether it's for ensuring that the lives of the rich are sanitised and simplified by their labours or whether their bodies will literally be carved up to perpetuate the lives and excesses of those who have more.This book looks at poverty, education and inequality from a child's perspective and it finds beauty, friendship, pain and a human experience that applies to us all equally.

i don't read a lot of fiction but really enjoyed this book. why? because it shows the world from the eyes of those who have little and gets us to understand the life they have to live on a daily basis. a very empathetic and important book-in a world that is increasingly losing its ability or interest to understand those who are different from oneself, books like this can only help close that gap in understanding. just like black lives matters helps us understand what it is like to be a colored person in western societies, just like a show like "unbelievable" on netflix helps us understand what it is like to be a women in a system designed by males; so this book helps us understand what it is like to be a poor person living in a system that is designed by those who benefit from it.

If you want something different, that doesn't follow a set formula and makes you smile one moment and then tear up the next, then this is for you. It's original, it's gripping, it's tragic and yet also resilient and life affirming.