The voice of the main character, a ten year old boy, almost makes up for the harsh setting and events that occur during the story. Chamdi, left by his father at an orphanage as an infant, sees the world differently than everyone else. When he decides to leave the orphanage, he encounters a world that is nothing like he expected, though he manages to find beauty and hope in the most difficult circumstances. ( )

A heartbreaking story of orphaned and homeless children in Bombay, told as a part of the larger struggles between Hindus and Muslims in that city in the early 1990s. Terribly sad, with moments of horrific cruelty, this is not a tale for the weak-stomached. Beautifully written, but very difficult to read. ( )

I have mixed feelings about this one - I liked it, but not as much as I think I could have; it was good, but not nearly as good as it should have been...the book dealt with some important and interesting issues, and did a good job of portraying those issues through the experience of an individual character; but...compared to, say, everything I've read by Deborah Ellis, I just couldn't get into the character or really find them believable... ( )

Oh, boy, this was rough to read. I knew things were bad for orphans in India. But this was tough. Chamdi is an orphan in Bombay. When he finds out that his orphanage is closing, he runs away. And, oh, the life on the streets is horrible. Within three days, a friend dies a brutal death, he is planning on stealing from a church, he starves, and he falls in love with another homeless girl. He sees people with no arms and no legs who are forced to serve as spies for the local thug. He almost has his tongue cut off. He gives up on ever finding his father who left him at the orphanage. Yet he doesn't stop dreaming of a better life. ( )

This is a horrifying account of the life of abandoned children in the slums of Mumbai where they are mutilated to make them into more compelling beggars or used as sex slaves. The book tries to end on a hopeful note -- the imagination and spirit of the central character is not crushed by the nightmare world around him. I found the work unrelentingly bleak. I believe the world depicted is accurate. When I was in Hyderabad, India, I read a newspaper account of a eunuch who was opening a school. Apparently, poor boys are sometimes castrated by their parents so they can support themselves as prostitutes to heterosexual men. What a world! ( )

There are SPOILERS in this review.
Had I not been well prepared by The Fine Balance, Homeless Bird, and other books, movies and articles, I would have found it profoundly shocking.
Even with this not being the case, I still found it disturbing and revealing in more aspects than I knew about. The life of street kids seems to be no better than the life in a concentration camp, as this association came to me after Viktor Frankl book.
It is shocking how little changes in India, how Mistry’s world of the sixties and seventies is similar to India in the middle of the nineties, in which Irani’s book is taking place.
I found Chamdi to be an interesting character. ‘The one with the thick skin’ – this is what his name apparently means. But, it isn’t apparent at all and doesn’t seem befitting. Sensitive, a dreamer and a storyteller, deeply honest and compassionate, he is readily likeable and a child other children and readers in the West could identify with. Yet, he is the one picked by Anand Bhai to be his apprentice. I find it rather perplexing – is he on his way to become a ruthless underworld lord? Is this what happens to his dreams? I understand that Irani feels that the book has a positive message. I didn’t see it that way.
( )

Wow! Of the five books chosen for Canada Reads this year, this is my hands-down favourite! This is an amazingly real and shocking story of a 10 year old boy who leaves an orphanage to live on the streets of Bombay. He is quickly involved in begging, stealing and terrible acts of violence, but somehow manages to maintain a sense of hope. The language is simple and staightforward, maintaining a true voice for the 10 year old narrator. ( )

Shocking, hard hitting and incredibly sad story of a boy who flees an orphanage to live on the streets of Mumbai finding life, death, love, hatred, squalor and every imaginable nastiness. Through it all, he hangs on to some shard of hope. The language is simple as befits the story being told from the boy's point of view, but it is powerful and moving and, like Anita Badami Rau's "I hear the nightbird call" drives home with a sledgehammer and a heavy spike the manner in which large religious conflicts are played out at the level of individual lives. ( )