Beautiful Country by Qiun Julie Wang

 Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021--San Antonio

Beautiful County by Quin Julie Wang is a memoir of the life of a young girl whose Chinese family lived illegally in the US after staying beyond the limits of their visas--the father's as a student and the mother and daughter was visitors.  It clearly expresses the difficulties of being here illegally--fear of being found out and deported, degrees and experience in the former country being meaningless here, jobs in sweatshops, low pay, cramped and unsafe living conditions, difficulty of ever getting ahead financially, difficulty finding a footing in schools without prior knowledge of English, teachers suspecting you of cheating if you write too well in English, the high extraneous costs of education, etc.  Most of the book deals with the family's life and, in particular, the daughter's life during the years she goes from the first grade through the 6th.  It's gives a good idea of how difficult life is for immigrants, and especially those without legal residency, in the US.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021--San Antonio, TX 

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a fascinating story.  It covers several generations of the members of the royal families of two African tribes from the late 1700s to the present with an emphasis on certain descendants of two sisters.  It deals with colonialism, slave trading, tribal wars, arranged marriage, skin coloration, beliefs, desires, etc., following the lines of descendants in both Ghana and America.  There are often parallels that are easy to see between political situations and family life of the times throughout that long period and today here in America.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

Saturday, Sept. 15, 2021--San Antonio

I quit reading Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi after getting through 20% of it.  I could follow the story, but it just didn't interest me.  It involved magical realism which I have never much appreciated.  The ratings for the book cover the whole range fairly evenly distributed between 1 star and 5 stars.  I rated it 2 stars out of 5 since I could follow the story easily but because I just wasn't interested in continuing it. 

The Promise by Damon Galgut

 Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021--San Antonio

The Promise by Damon Galgut received great reviews by BBC, The Observer, and The Times.  Set in South Africa, it is the story of the members of an Africaans farming family and the members of the family of their Black servan.  It covers approximately a 50-year period of time from when apartheid existed to recently.  It reveals the changes that take place in South Africa related to race relations, economics, religion, and politics.  It is well written and worth reading.  I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Afterparties by Anthony Viasna So

Monday, Aug. 30, 2021--San Antonio

Afterparties by Anthony Viasna So is a book consisting of a collection of short stories about the lives of Cambodian immigrants living in the Central Valley of California after immigrating to the US following the collapse of the Pol Pot Khmer Rogue regime.  The stories are quite humorous and provide intimate glances into the lives of "Cambos"--both those who have struggled in poverty and those who have lived the American dream of growing wealthy, their traditions, their extended families, etc.  There are connections between the stories--characters who are parts of more than one story although, each story is separate from the others.  The book was recommended by the New York Times.  Unfortunately, the author, a graduate of Stanford University, died of an overdose in 2020.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

 Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021--San Antonio

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a very good book that was a finalist for the National Book Award.  The two main characters are two girls/women who were born and raised in a rural Louisiana community of light-skinned black people.  Everyone there took pride in being light-colored and the town was unwelcoming to those with deep black skin.  However, the residents there also suffered, like so many black people, from discrimination and even violence at the hands of whites.  The two girls, at age 17 run away to New Orleans to create a new life for themselves.  And after one gets fired from the laundry where they both work, their lives take a change.  They need money to support themselves, and it isn't easy for a black girl to find a job, especially one who is not legally an adult.  One day the unemployed one wanders into a New Orleans department store--not through the side entrance for blacks but through the main doors.  No one says or does anything; they assume she is white.  She has always been good in school, has good penmanship, is good at typing, etc., so when she learns that the department store is hiring a new secretary, she applies and gets the job.  From then on, the sisters gradually grow apart with one continuing to live as a black person and the other passing as white.  They eventually lose track of each other and live totally separate lives.  The book continues to tell the stories of these two sisters and the children they have, the problems that keep them apart, the coincidence that brings them together briefly, and the distant friendship the develops between their two daughters.  I liked the story and the quality of the writing.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Home Stretch by Graham Norton

Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021--San Antonio

I enjoyed Home Stretch by Graham Norton more than most of the books I have read recently.  It's well written and occasionally has wonderful laugh-out-loud moments.  The story has some similarities to one of my all-time favorite novels, Atonement--especially the aspect that something is reported at the beginning that is a falsehood that results in lives being ruined for years.  I couldn't put the book down once I started it.  And I was so sorry for it to end, since I had enjoyed it so much.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Monday, Aug. 9, 2021--San Antonio

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri is the fourth book I have read by her.  She is an excellent writer.  This current book reads a lot like a memoir.  It has simple, but beautifully written descriptions of the thoughts a person as she moves from location to location as a part of her daily life.  I read the book in two days--75% yesterday and the remainder today.  Like all of her books, it was a pleasure to read it.  I rated the book 4 stars out of 5.

Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich

Saturday, Aug. 7, 2021--San Antonio

 Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich is a collection of short stories.  Each is well written, but rather than being stories that grab your attention, they tend to be "slices of life" stories which tell what is happening at a given, though not necessarily meaningful, moment in the life of a person or the lives of associated persons.  I enjoyed the stories, but in terms of how much pleasure it was to read them as a whole, I assigned a rating of 3 stars out of 5.

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

Friday, July 23, 2021--San Antonio

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor is a collection of stories that are sometimes tied together by having crossover characters in them.  Sometimes the stories drop off and pick up later after other stories have been told.  Each story is interesting, but I had trouble keeping track of the many characters and remembering what I had read about whom previously.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber

Friday, July 17, 2021--San Antonio

Secreits of Happiness by Joan Silber consists of the stories of several characters who are occasionally connected to the characters within the other stories.  She originally published each story separately, but put them together in book form here.  It's a good book for readers who like to experience the way that other people live their lives, as a wide variety of types of characters are included.  The stories are sometimes humorous, and each is easy to read.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li

 Friday, July 9, 2021--San Antonio

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li is not your typical novel.  There is no plot.  Instead, there are a series of conversations that tend to involve philosophical reasoning.  The conversations take place between a mother and her deceased 16-year-old son who committed suicide.  The son was very intelligent with signs of being a prodigy based on his use of vocabulary and his form of reasons from a very young age.  Early in the book, I considered quitting it.  But then I went to the reviews and found that ratings were fairly evenly distributed among the "stars" in the 5-star system.  As I continued reading, I found myself thinking both positively and negatively about the book.  I've never been a big fan of philosophical reasoning, and there is a LOT of it.  In fact, there is so much of it that I found myself wondering if some of the writer's purpose in writing the book was to insert a bunch of philosophical ideas that she had collected over the years.  However, the author herself lost a 16-year old son.  So I eventually chalked up the discussions to be based more on the types of discussions she had had with him before he died as well as the ones she imagined she could have had with him after his death.  Anyway, the book is short (about 170 pages) and I stayed with it reading about 20 pages a day.  By the end, I felt a bit more positive about it.  I gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Need by Helen Phillips

Wednesday, June 30, 2021--San Antonio

The Need by Helen Phillips is requires a lot of thinking for trying to understand it.  In the book, Phillips seems to be trying to express what is going on in a woman's mind as she handles the burden of juggling a career, a marriage to a husband who travels, raising two young children, and keeping a household running (meals, laundry, cleaning, etc.). In many of the reviews of it, references are made to it being a horror story.  The book was long-listed for The National Book Award and was listed among the best novels of 2019 by a number of publications and organizations.  Ratings by readers cover the whole range of possibilities.  The book was easy to read, but hard to understand (to make sense of).  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Tuesday, June 22, 2021--San Antonio

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne was not a book I had on my list of books to consider reading, but I saw it among a list of books TIME magazine was recommended.  It's actually a book that was published back in 2017 which was named Book of the Year by Book of the Month Club and was picked by readers of the New York Times as one of the best books of the year.  

As I started reading the book, I found myself really enjoying the story while also thinking there were too many coincidences occurring in it for it to be considered seriously as a good book.  As I got further, I laughed a lot.  Then I reacted emotionally to events that were occurring.  I became invested in the stories of the various characters and didn't want to put the book down.  The central character's (Cyril's) life is covered from birth to near death.  It takes place mainly in Ireland and greatly deals with the injustices within the country due to the influence of the Catholic church and its priests.  Cyril is born to a teenage mother who is shamed, physically abused, and run out of town by the local priest when it becomes known that she is pregnant.  When he is born, he is given up for adoption and ends up in an upper-class home of a man and a woman who tend to mostly ignore him and are always quick to remind him that they are his "adoptive parents" and that he will never be a REAL Avery (their last name).  Cyril is eventually sent off to a private boarding school.  As he matures, he realizes he is gay, but in the Ireland of the times, he never admits it to anyone.  He has a few quick sexual encounters in parks and other places--none of them satisfying.  He dates a couple of women (since that is what everyone pushes him to do and is what all gay men tended to do in Ireland at that time to hide their sexual orientation).  Eventually, there is an event that results in everyone knowing he is gay and his running away from Ireland leaving a tangled mess of emotions behind.  As time passes, he experiences danger, love, crises, etc., before finally returning to Ireland where he tries to make up for lost time through family reconciliations and new connections.   It's a book that can bring the reader to highs of joy and lows of sorrow more than once.  And it can leave the reader laughing aloud so many times.  

By the time I finished the book, I was willing to mostly overlook the too many examples of coincidences.  The story was just so compelling, the characters so interesting, and the pleasure of reading it so wonderful that I eventually gave the book 4 stars out of 5. 

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

Tuesday, June 15, 2021--San Antonio

I became aware of the book The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright because of an NPR story.  It's a unique publishing situation.  The book was written in the early 1940's, but was not published until this year.  The author is a Black man who had two very successful novels published (one before and one after this book) plus other publications.  This book was not published at the time, because the publishing company thought the readers would not be comfortable with the first quarter of it which deals with a young Black man being picked up by 3 policemen as he walks home from his job working for a wealthy family next door to another family where an intruder, unknown to him, has killed the residents that day.  In an attempt to quickly solve the crime, the policemen dismiss everything he tells them and torture him through the night.  Finally, they tell him they can send him home to his pregnant wife if he signs a paper (which he is now too disoriented to read and includes a confession to having committed the murders. 

It was difficult for me to read those pages, just as the original publishers had expected it to be then.  I had to stop and wait for another day to continue.  But I forced myself to go back to it because I wanted to know about the underground life he had lived and how he had managed to escape from the police to live it.  The book has gotten very good reviews, and it was quite interesting.  It includes another short piece that the author wrote that explains his (the author's) background story of having been raised by a stern 7th Day Adventist grandmother and how that affected his writing of this short book.  Overall, I enjoyed the book and I appreciated the added feature that explained so much of it.  I gave the book 3 stars out of 5. 

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Wednesday, May 19, 2021--San Antonio

 Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson is a short novel, but one with a fascinating story of 4 generations of a family spanning time from the Tulsa massacre which was followed by moves to Chicago and to two different locations in Brooklyn.  It is the story of mostly the women within a successful and educated (college degrees) Black family.  It is also a story of caution, love, alienation, declaring independence, and adapting.  The characters are fascinating.  The story is captivating.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

 Thursday, May 13, 2021--San Antonio

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy is a confusing book.  It's meant to be that way.  Everyone reading it has to decide what's happening and why things are supposedly known in advance of when they happen.  I've come to my own conclusion which I will type two lines below where I give my rating for the book, so SPOILER ALERT for then.

The story is told from the perspective of a British scholar who teaches Eastern European history and makes a research trip to East Berlin in 1988.  His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his manual laborer father who believed in socialism as the best political solution for overcoming poverty and hardship along with his brother who was also a manual laborer.  He had little in common with either of them.  He appears to be sexually fluid with the father and brother being confounded by the way he is "different" from what they expect him to be.  For instance, he wears his mother's string of pearls every day from the time of her death as a way of remembering her as his protector within the family while she was alive and he has sexual relationships with both men and women.  Also, he is so narcissistic that he has difficulty maintaining any relationships due to thinking only of his own needs and interests with no concern about those of others.   On his research trip to East Berlin, he demonstrates a suspicion of Stasi agents having listening bugs, following him, etc., while not being aware enough that expressing his love via letter to a man and trying to help a woman get the opportunity to escape to the west via the efforts of a new local acquaintance who has a better standard of living and more privileges than the normal East German standards are ill-advised acts that could get him and the others all in trouble.  In time, the reader learns a lot about what has happened, but has to come to his/her own conclusion regarding the true circumstances.  I gave the book a rating of 4 stars out of 5.

SPOILER:  Personally, I think the character is suffering from dementia.  I think that in the first half of the book he is remembering the distant memories from 1988 and describing them rather clearly because he is in the early stages of dementia when long-term memory is better than short-term memory.  That would explain why the story is told so clearly while he also somehow already knows that in just a year, the wall will come down.  In the second half of the book, his dementia has progressed to the point that he is mixing memories up in his mind and making associations between memories that may not be related.  By the end, he is jumping quickly through his memories as they flash through his mind as a part of the dying process.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

 Monday, Apr. 26, 2021--San Antonio

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad was named on a number of lists of the best books of 2019.  It is the story of one man from Palestine who was sent to a boarding school in Constantinople in the time of the Ottoman Empire for his secondary education and was sent to France where he studied medicine in Montpelier and other subjects at the Sorbonne through the period of WWI.  But it is also the story of the whole of the Middle East and, in particular, Palestine, from the time of the Ottoman Empire when Palestine was a part of Greater Syria through WWI, the partitioning of the region by France and England, and the increasing immigration of Jews into the area after WWI and as WWII approached.  There is a emphasis on the efforts to establish a Palestinian State throughout that time period that has failed due to harsh rule by the Ottomans and the British during the period of the novel (and has continued to be thwarted long after the novel ends as the country of Israel was eventually took control of the rest of the land area of Palestine after fighting wars with its neighbors).  It's a complex story dealing not only with the history of this man and his home region, but with the young man's appreciation of French culture, his love of a French woman while living in France,  the customs and expectations for a young man from the Middle East, and the extent to which a family will go to enforce the young to comply with those customs and expectations.  The history of the area is such a big part of the story that at times I felt it strayed the story of the central character for period of time that were too long.  But overall, both stories make compelling reading.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

 Sunday, Mar. 21, 2021--San Antonio

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom is a book gifted to me by friends who had read it.  It takes place on a plantation in Virginia in the late 1700s/early 1800s.  Unlike other plantation novels that emphasize the relationships between the white owners and the black slaves, this one brings in a major character who leaves Ireland on a ship with her family which is contracted to be indentured servants in America.  When her parents both die during the passage, the captain, who uses his ship to financially support his family plantation, brings the girl to live out her indentured servitude at the plantation.  Female slaves there fall into two main categories--house slaves and field slaves.  The girl is assigned to live in the kitchen house, an outbuilding where the cooking takes place, and to assist there with cooking plus having chores assigned to her in the big house.  Unlike other whites on the plantation, she lives with the slaves who become like family to her.  This sets up a contrast in outlook and reaction for her vs. the white family members and the white overseer.  The story covers approximately 40 years.  So many of the turns in the story are based on a persons making wrong assumptions and persons not speaking up to clarify the situation that has caused the wrong assumption.  Almost everything that goes wrong in the story is due to this.  Eventually, I found myself wanting to yell at some of the characters for the poor decisions they were making.  They story is easy to read and moves at a fast enough pace, but I lost respect for it as the poor decisions piled up toward the end.  I rated it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

 Sunday, Mar. 7, 2021--San Antonio

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells is a book originally written in German and translated into English.  It won the European Prize for Literature in 2016, is listed among the 100 German must-read books, and was on the best seller list in Germany for almost two years.  It took all of Europe and eventually much of the world by storm due to its translation into many languages.  The book is essentially the story of a family concentrating on the lives of the three children after the sudden death of their parents,  the friends and relationships they have, and especially on the life of one of those children.  The story flows easily for the reader, and the characters are all interesting.  The book, although well reviewed and a prize winner, is often referenced as a tearjerker.  I enjoyed it and read it rather quickly.  I gave the book a rating of 5 stars out of 5.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Tuesday, Mar. 2, 2021--San Antonio

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize in 2008.  It is a delightful novel--funny, interesting, and far more entertaining than the film version which was recently released on Netflix.  As a person who has traveled independently to India 6 times and has observed the relationships that exist there in small communities and big cities between those who have money and those who are the working poor, I found the descriptions of life and of interactions between people of different "stations" in life to be so authentic.  Balram, the main character, is poor and from a small village.  What makes the novel so much fun to read is the way that he expresses himself at times--both the structure of his sentences and the observations he has made of life.  I often found myself laughing aloud.  The book as a whole, however, is also about far more than this man's life; it is about the problems faced by everyone in just getting by in India due to dysfunctional government agencies, corruption, moral contradictions, the perpetuation of the caste restrictions in informal ways (since they formally are banned by law), etc.  If you read this novel, you will get a vivid picture of what life is like in India and what people of all standings in the country face in trying just to live their lives.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

 Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021--San Antonio

Aurthur and George by Julian Barnes was my first book to read during the GREAT TEXAS WINTER STORMS (two bouts of freezing rain followed by 4" of snow within a 5-day period and the longest period of below-freezing temperatures in the history of records here in San Antonio) of 2021.  I had waited a week since finishing my previous book to start another because I needed to spend time on other things.  But then the storm hit and I had no electricity, no Internet, no heat except from a gas fireplace, etc.  I couldn't download another book due to the Internet being out, so I started searching my bookshelf for a book I hadn't yet read that sounded interesting.  Arthur and George is a combination of the stories of the lives of Arthur Conan Doyle (who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories) and George Edalji, the quiet son of an Indian Church of England priest and his Scottish wife, who grows up being teased and discriminated against.  The first part of the book covers their lives separately by going back and forth to tell their stories of growing up.  Then the story turns only to George to tell of a crime he is accused of committing, his trial, and his time in prison.  From there, the story turns back to Arthur to tell about his marriage, his interest in spiritism, and his life with a second woman.  He becomes aware of the miscarriage of justice against George, born and raised in England but never accepted as British because of his heritage.  The book continues with Arthur working to get George a pardon and compensation for his miscarriage of justice.  It continues with Arthur's eventual marriage to the second woman after his first wife's death, his continued investigation of spiritism, and his eventual death.  It is not a biography, but it is built around true facts and told as historical fiction; it even has an afterward which tells what eventually happened to all the major characters following the point in time when the novel ends.  I found sections of the book to be extended too long and of little interest to me.  And it was too many stories within one book--the story of Arthur's life, the story of George's life, the story of discrimination in England, the story of a true crime series that occurred, and the story of spiritism and those who believe in it.  It was a finalist for the Booker Prize and I enjoyed it most of the time; as a compromise due to the multiple stories being jumbled together and my lost interest at times, I rate it 3 1/2 stars out of 4.

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.

 Feb. 5, 2021--San Antonio

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr., is his first novel.  It was one of the most anticipated books of January, 2021 with more than 20 major recommendations including TIME, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, etc.  It is the story of the people on a plantation in Mississippi, but it is mainly the story of the slaves there including the lingering memories that have been carried forward by word-of-mouth of where their people came from, how they traveled to America, and what happened to them over time in America and specifically on this plantation.  It is unflinchingly specific about the treatment they have received as captives and slaves.  The reader learned that they have retained certain knowledge of their own culture and understandings even after generations in America even when separated from others of their families and tribes.  There are many major characters in the book--the owner of the plantation who is harsh but maybe not as much as some other slave owners, his cousin who is the overseer of the slaves and thinks that the owner should be more harsh, the house slaves who have suffered greatly over time even though their living conditions are a bit better than those of the field slaves, the slave who maneuvers to have a higher position by adopting the religion of his owners and seeks permission to preach to the other slaves and who eventually positions himself as the arbiter of what is right and wrong within the slave colony, the son of the plantation owner who has been North for college and has no interest in taking his father's role when the time comes, the wife of the plantation owner who had many miscarriages before the son was born and has developed mental instability due to it, etc.  But the two central characters the story revolves around at least half the time are two young men barely past puberty who are in charge of the barn and its animals, have been friends since childhood, who are quite different in each of their outlooks toward life, but whose friendship has turned into a loving sexual relationship over time.  I found it difficult at times to comprehend what the author was trying to communicate with his rather "lofty" language, but the stories of all the characters were fascinating to read.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Sing to It by Amy Hempel

 Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021--San Antonio

Sing to It by Amy Hempel is a collection of short stories.  Several are very short--between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 pages long.  Hempel seems to have a knack for thinking thoughts and her idea of their meanings or her impressions related to them.  That's what the shortest stories are.  But even the longest story in the book has many of these short thoughts inserted among the ongoing information that creates the broader story.  It's easy to read her writing, and her expressions are delightful in relation to her thoughts.  I spent more time on this book than most because I have had more things going on in my life while reading it and because I had become a bit tired of reading one book after another every 4-7 days.  My rating for the book is 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han

 Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021--San Antonio

Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han was a TIME Must-Read 100 for 2020 and is about a family of Chinese immigrants to Texas (Houston and eventually Plano).  It's a story that will be relatable to quite a few immigrant families--initially a happy marriage between a man and a woman from two different classes who soon have a young son, a parent (in this case, the wife) who leaves their homeland to go to the U.S. for advanced studies and a chance to make a better life for them all, a husband who, after only 6 months, breaks the plan for him and the son to stay in China for 5 years until the wife has finished her studies and has an income, a husband who has a hobby that he hopes to turn into a career (although a career that has little success), the conflict that develops as the husband takes the main role caring for the children because his job is more flexible and hers is more important for supporting them all, a second child, a female, who is born after the 5 hard years of getting established in the US, discipline and behavioral problems that develop both at home and at school that relate back to the way the father was raised in China, etc.  Tied in with all of this are the mythical stories that are brought from China and shared with the children, the misconceptions about what is actually true that can develop due to love of one's family, etc.  For me, it was an up and down story that bored me at times and became exciting and interesting at other times.  Plus, there was a bit too much detail about Texas and, especially Plano; I think the author is too Texan and has bought into the boasting habit of Texans, especially the Dallas area where one constantly hears statements of citizens trying to confirm and to convince others of what a World Class City it is.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

 Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021--San Antonio

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara is a story about children who start disappearing in a poor slum on the far outreaches of a major Indian city.  Although not written specifically for adolescents, it would appeal to them.  The author, after putting her writing project aside because she wasn't pleased how it was going, took it back up later when she realized that telling the story from the perspective of three 9-year-old friends (schoolmates--2 boys and a girl) would make the story work better.  The result is a serious story with lots of humor and charm based upon the naive perspectives and thoughts of the children plus a good use of English as it is often spoken by Indians--maybe because literal translations from the way words or organized in Hindi are then stated in the same format in English:  "We are upgoing to the top floor."  As children start missing in their slum, the main characters become amateur investigators based on their experiences of watching police shows on TV.  It's a good book (listed by TIME as one of the 100 must reads of 2020) and fun to read.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.