The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine

Batuk is a fifteen-year-old girl living in a brothel on Common Street in Mumbai, India.  The bright points in her life are her best friend, Puneet, a male prostitute living a few “nests” down from her in the same brothel, and a notebook which she keeps hidden away in a slit in her thin mattress. Her vivid imagination and knack for storytelling lead her to paint a world of cheerful descriptions of the ragged and decrepit room that she describes as an elaborately painted and decorated nest or cage and the sexual acts that she is forced to endure is misleadingly called making sweet cakes.  Over the course of the novel Batuk tells the story of how she was sold by her father  into prostitution as a nine-year-old to pay off unspecified family debts.
The proprietor of the brothel, Mamaki Briilla, drops a pencil and instead of returning it Batuk steals and hides it so that she can recount her early life, and the last day that she saw the family and the father she still misses after six years. Batuk is an emerging beauty and after one of her “customers” noticing this suggest her for a position outside the brothel walls, but is she better off facing a new situation or staying with the horror that she already knows?
James Levine does an amazing job getting us into the head of Batuk.  Though she has grown up with a family and has had to face the betrayal of those closest to her she tries to make the best of it and always see the beauty in the life despite her horrific circumstances.  Batuk weaves a world of beauty and exquisite stories out of the every day tragedy that is her life.  She creates a world that you want to believe in for her sake though it makes the crushing reality that she faces that much more difficult and painful to witness. The subject matter is dark and movingly in contrast to the light and engaging way that Batuk presents her narrative.
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Amy's Review:
If I had read the back of the book or googled this book on the internet and read some of the reviews about it, I am not sure I would have read it.  However I did read the book cover to cover and I had to read it in spurts.  The first 100 pages kept my curiosity and helped me keep going.  I was wondering the whole time what was going to happen next and what would happen to Batuk.  I had hopes that it was going to be one of those stories that started with tragedy and ends with a remarkable turnaround.  My hopes were dashed when I got to the end of the book.  I described this book to my fellow book club members as "graphic" because I couldn't think of a better word to describe it. Mostly I was speechless while I was reading the book.   Most of them didn't understand what I meant by graphic.  They were thinking of blood and gore.  We have 7 members in our book club and to my knowledge I am the only one that has read the book cover to cover.  In a way I am wishing that I hadn't read the book.  Specific scenes and the nature of those scenes linger in my mind.  In the last 100 pages  towards the end their is a scene that takes place in a hotel penthouse that has me realing. The violence reaches out and grabs you and doesn't let go.  It lingers long after you have returned the book to the library or to the shelf of your own private collection.  If I think too much about it, it makes me cry and to be come a hermit and not watch the news or read the newspapers because I know this stuff happens on a daily basis around the world.  I do have to say that I am glad though that someone had the courage in the book to defend Batuk and take matters into their own hands.  The book did wake me up to a sad reality though.  This does happen and it happens more than we know it does.  One of my fellow book club members pointed out that this happens at the Superbowl in whatever city it happens to be in.  High Rollers pay lots of money for child prostitutes to be present while watching the game.  When she told me that I got a sick feeling in my stomach.  I just can't wrap my head around how someone can do the things they do to an innocent child that doesn't know any better.  Being a mother of two my protective instincts kick into high gear when I read stuff like this and hear real life stories about the things that happen to kids. I also cannot understand how someone can sell their child for money.  Wouldn't the guilt just eat them alive?  And why in the word did you bring that child into this world if you were just going to end up discarding them like you do a shirt that is too small?After some thought and typing this review I would recommend this book to someone that has the stomach to read the details of child prostitution.  I would be curious to what they would say about this book.  If nothing else this book opens your eyes to something that happens every day, every hour and every minute whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
Below is what a fellow book club member said:
I read it too Amy.  Sadly, that is the difference between our world we live in, and the
world that people from other countries live in.  Family does not mean the
same thing to them as it does to us. Our children are the most valuable and
precious things in our lives.  But to someone such as Batuk's parents,
serviving means sacrificing what you have to, to do so. 
Below is what another fellow book club member said about this book:About the book, I wanted
to say that I didn't think the overall product made it worth the detailed
graphics. I am always open about reading anything and I'm glad I read it just
because — BUT it was so graphic, hard to imagine this stuff goes on — and of course
it does.