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dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
This book was completely shocking, stunning and quite desperately sad, actually. We are shown the violent reality of what it can be like growing up in the side of Mauritius that the rich tourists never see, through the eyes of four teenagers: Eve, Saad, Savita and Clélio. Devi unflinchingly describes their increasingly harrowing experiences growing up in a place which traps them in a lifetime of poverty and violence with little means of escape. Her prose is at times both poetic and lyrical but still grounded in honesty and a start presentation of what violence and fear can do to a young person still figuring out their place in it. It was quite heartbreaking - as a reader, I kept looking for a glimmer of hope that these four could escape their circumstances somehow despite knowing that the cycle of poverty is almost impossible to climb out of. Devastating.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Rape, Sexual violence