Sold | Patricia Mccormick | The Power in Believing

Sold | Patricia Mccormick | Very touching story

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	Sold Patricia Mccormick Hyperion Book CH, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 59 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Power in Believing

Truthfully, I started this story and stopped. Started and stopped. I kept having nightmares in my sleep of Lakshmi. These dreams were so harrowing that I would have to step away and pick up another book with new words to scrub out the ones from Sold that conjured the images in my mind. (I know this may sound weird to some people but I'm aware that I operate like a sponge at times, making it very difficult for me not to feel. I'm just too spiritually sensitive to such things.)

In other words, Patricia McCormick writes with a brave and an unflinching eye. The story is told from the POV of Lakshmi. A novel of this proportion is difficult to summarize because this story is about everything: all that we hold dear and all that we fear, the hopes we have for our children and the dangers that exist for many other children in the world, the strife of women and the bias of men...I could go on and on but instead will focus on, what for me, is the novel's triumph: the power in believing.

Lakshmi believes that she is old enough to help earn money for her family; when they lose their crops to a monsoon and her stepfather demands that she be sold, Lakshmi is brave and looks forward to the opportunity to help. She believes that this will help the family put a tin roof over their home, clothes on her baby brother, and food in their stomachs.

Once she is sold, she believes Bajai Sita and Auntie are going to set her up for housework. When that doesn't happen, she is taken under the care of Uncle Husband, whom she believes will protect her but instead, he sells her into the hands of Mumtaz--the sadistic owner of a brothel called "Happiness House." This girl, for all that she is forced under in her sexual slavery, is strong. Initially, she believes her hunger can outlive Mumtaz's threat to starve her if she doesn't work. Actually, Lakshmi's belief is correct because it was Mumtaz who grew tired of waiting for Lakshmi to give in so Mumtaz begins drugging her.

The details from then on are harrowing and like I said, I had to put the novel away several times to give my mind a break from the pain Lakshmi endured. It was all so vivid and made all too real after reading McCormick's author note.

After a while, Lakshmi believes that she can pay off her debts. When she finds out that Mumtaz has no intention of letting her go, Lakshmi holds on to the belief that an American worker will rescue her...I won't say whether or not this happens for those who don't like endings to be spoiled.

I can't say enough about this book and yet there is so much more that my heart knows needs to be said, like the way the characters survive through the power of language, how education should not be a privilege but a right to every person in this world, the crisis of health care and fighting to educate communities about HIV, the power of friendship and memory...there's just so much in this novel. Goodness! I HEART McCormick for writing this book and you will too if you haven't read it already.

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Very touching story

I finished this book in one night. I was very moved, and feel for girls in these situations all over the world. I was surprised to find this book in the teen section at target. Its very graphic & detailed, but leaves a lasting impression. I would highly recommend this book for mature teens and adults.

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I wasn't particularly expecting this book to be my sort of thing, but I found it to be surprisingly easy to read. The subject matter is quite sensitive but the story is told in a quite unique way.
The writing smart, crisp and the chapters are very short. In fact some of the shorter chapters are like poems. That might sound like it's pretentious but I found it really worked. The story is quite moving in places and I enjoyed it because it's not the sort of thing I would normally read. If I have any quibble it's that, due to the short chapters and liberal spacing used on the pages I found I'd read all 270 odd pages in one day. I could happily have read a bit more.
Anyway hats off to Patrica McCormick who tells the tale of sexual slavery without ramming home any kind of message designed to make the reader feel guilty for having (hopefully) a more pleasant existence than the main protagonist.

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Heartbreaking Reality

My son bought this book for a College Course at Purdue Calumet. The day it came I started reading it, It was a very good read,very heartbreaking that a child lived this way. It took me one night to complete, I had such a hard time trying to put it down. My son had a hard time getting into the whole story, until I told him to look at this girl as if she were a relative or friend. That's when it captured his 18 year old heart. It makes you think about what a Cruel world we live in. This book will break your heart, especially if your a mother.

fast

This book is, essentially, written in rhythms with short pages and short paragraphs that make it a really fast read. I really enjoyed this novel, I found it was very insightful and moving.
However, as an honors student, I am used to over analyzing everything and when I read something I always find myself thinking: how could I make this better? In the beginning, the character talks about having a tin roof and I instantly saw this as a metaphor that would be carried on throughout the book. A tin roof means that the father does not gamble away the money, that the son works in the city, and that the rain stays out and the baby is healthy. The tin roof, I thought represented protection and security, something the main character would not have once she entered the brothel. I was disappointed though, and it was never brought up again.
I was also a little confused, this book does not stay consistent and some times it is written in past tense and other times in present tense.
I was not all that happy with this format, it made it go fast but didn't leave a lot of room for character development and I felt that I didn't get a good enough sense of the horrors of what was happening in the brothel.

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