The good girls An ordinary killing
Book - 2021
"The girls' names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic. They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started. Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing; and hours later they were found hanging in the orchard. Who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the people left behind. In the ensuing months, the investigation into their dea...ths would implode everything that their small community held to be true, and instigate a national conversation about sex and violence. Slipping deftly behind political maneuvering, caste systems, and codes of honor in a village in northern India, The Good Girls returns to the scene of Padma and Lalli's short lives and shameful deaths, and dares to ask: What is the human cost of shame?"--
- Subjects
- Genres
- True crime stories
- Published
-
New York :
Grove Press
2021.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition
- Item Description
- "First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Bloomsbury Circus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc."
- Physical Description
- xxii, 314 pages : maps ; 22 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [313]-314).
- ISBN
- 9780802158208
- Prologue: Good Days Are Coming Soon
- Rabi: Spring, 2014
- An Accusation Is Made
- Lalli's Father Buys a Phone
- Cousin Manju Observes Something Strange
- Nazru Sees It Too
- Unspeakable Things
- The Naughty Boy
- The Invisible Women
- Lalli Asks for a Memento
- The Fair Comes to the Village
- Padma Lalli, Gone
- Thieves in the Tobacco
- Where Are They?
- Every Eight Minutes
- Jeevan Lal's Secret
- Adrenaline in the Fields, Tears at Home
- Nazru Changes His Story, Again
- 'Bastards, Go Look for Them Yourselves'
- A Finger Is Pointed
- Sohan Lal Storms Out
- Finally, News
- 'An Unspeakable Sight'
- A Policeman's Suspicion
- The Poster Child for a New India
- A Reporter's Big Break
- The Matter Will End'
- The First Politician Arrives
- The Matter Should Be Settled
- Someone to Solve Their Problems
- The Politician's Aide
- 'Liars, Thieves and Fucking Scum'
- Cable Wars in the Katra Fields
- Complaints Are Written, Then Torn
- The Bodies Come Down
- A Sweeper and a 'Weaker' Doctor
- The Post-Mortem
- Farewell Padma Lalli
- Kharif: Summer, 2014
- The Worst Place in the World
- The Women Who Changed India
- The Zero Tolerance Policy
- A Broken System Exposed
- Separate Milk From Water
- A Red Flag
- The Villagers Talk
- The False Eyewitness
- Purity and Pollution
- A Post-mortem Undone
- 'Habitual of Sexual Intercourse'
- A Mother Goes 'Mad'
- Visitors to the Jail
- The Case of the Missing Phones
- The Truth About the Phone
- 'She Is All I Have'
- 'There Is No Need to Go Here and There'
- 'Did You Kill Padma and Lalli?'
- 'Machines Don't Lie'
- 'Have You Ever Been in Love?'
- DROWNED
- Results and Rumours
- The Rogue Officer
- Friends, Not Strangers
- Pappu and Nazru Face to Face
- 'Girls Are Honour of Family
- Pappu in Jail, the Shakyas in Court
- Epilogue
- Birth
- Rebirth
- Love, Hope, Vote
- Author's Note
- Notes
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review