Delaney on Behind the Beautiful Forevers

In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, written by Katherine Boo relationships are tested, physically, mentally, and spiritually. The part that was most important to me was a confirmation that faith is a strong presence even when people have nothing. This was illustrated when Boo wrote about Abdul getting a beating in the jail. He did not want his mother to worry about him and so “he closed his eyes and tried to recall some key words from the last time he had prayed” (Boo 105). I have found from my own experience that faith is a huge factor in the lives of people, especially in poorer areas. I went to Nicaragua on a mission trip one summer and the people there also had strong faith.

Stylistically I learned to be more detail oriented and that incorporating quotations to go along with the detail makes the writing more powerful. An example of this is when we are reading about Meena’s death. Boo details the experience of her taking and throwing up the rat poison, all while adding dialogue between her, Manju, and Meena’s mother. (Pages 186 – 189)

Content wise, the beginning of the book was hard to grasp onto and follow. With so many characters I would get lost and several times have to start reading passages over. Stylistically, the book was not completely linear, which is not a bad thing to do, on the contrary it does add more to the book, it is just slightly more difficult to follow, when like I said earlier, it was slightly hard to follow to begin with. Other than that, I really enjoyed Boo’s novel and learned a lot about how to improve my own writing.