a long way home saroo brierley book review

#A LONG WAY HOME SAROO BRIERLEY BOOK REVIEW FULL#

I don’t know what that was worth then, but now one rupee is equivalent to 1.6 cents, so less than a penny for 6 hours of washing dishes. Still, it wasn’t enough, so Guddu, the oldest at ten, went to work, washing dishes for 6 hours for half a rupee. Kamla, Saroo’s mother, worked 6 days a week, morning until nightfall, hard physically grueling work, sometimes gone for days at a time. Broken, unpaved streets outside throughout the poverty-stricken neighborhood. When Saroo’s father left his mother and their family for another woman, another family, they moved from the Hindu community / side of town to the Muslim side moving into a single room falling apart with a cowpat and mud floor and a small corner fireplace. I’m no film critique, however I found the film to be far better, and I enjoyed it far more than the book.Sad, horrifying, wondrous, life affirming, heartbreaking and heartwarming. If you have not heard about it already, this book was adapted into a film, starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. So, although Brierley’s story was remarkable, I’m not so sure this was the best platform to tell this story. I also felt as though the book could have been condensed much further and still have produced the same affect. However, there just seemed to lack a little something extra. Saroo Brierley’s book was a pleasant read, the writing and grammar was decent so there were no problems with struggling to read it.

But, there were a few moments in the first half of the book, when Saroo would have been very young, where I found myself questioning Saroo’s recollections – as it did not seem believable that these memories would still be so clear. I understand people are different sometimes traumatic experiences live with us very clearly, and sometimes our subconscious blocks out this trauma. Often because of this, I would find myself questioning how reliable this story is. Lion: A Long Way Home is also, for the majority, a story relying on very old memories. It simply felt that Brierley was attempting to fill space so a book could be marketed. Although understandably this was a repetitive act, I just felt that the book did not need this section to be quite so stretched out. Brierley describes how he would spend hours upon hours searching on Google Earth for his village in India. However, the second half I found began to feel a little repetitive.

#A LONG WAY HOME SAROO BRIERLEY BOOK REVIEW FULL#

The first half of Brierley’s story was great it was full of interesting anecdotes and information. However, the book itself was a little disappointing. Even more so when you learn that Saroo finding his home town in India all these years later was a mere accident. This was a remarkable story, it seems incredible that a young boy lost so far from home would go on to make the journey that Saroo did. The second half of the book explores his adoption to Australia, his accomplishments and most importantly how he goes on to find his way back home to India.

We learn of his experiences sleeping on the streets, how he was saved (twice) by a homeless man and how he was taken in by an orphanage. The first half of the book focuses on the struggles Saroo faced as a young boy lost in India. The memoir tells the story of how a five-year-old Saroo boarded a train and got lost in India, and what has happened to him in the twenty-five years since this train journey. Lion: A Long Way Home is the true story of Saroo Brierley.

A long way home saroo brierley book review