Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this hair-raising debut from Hassan, a family of indentured servants is torn apart in contemporary Pakistan. Work at the primitive brickworks is backbreaking for seven-year-old Lalloo's parents. What's more, usurious loans force entire generations to spend their lives trapped in a cycle of debt. When his older brother, Jugnu, speaks out against the exploitation, Jugnu is beaten to death by the overseer's goons. Lalloo's parents send him away for his safety, and he eventually becomes an apprentice to an auto mechanic. As a frightened and lonely young man, Lalloo yearns for love and has recurring nightmares about Jugnu's death, which he witnessed and blames himself for--otherwise, why would his parents have sent him away? Meanwhile, his sisters Pinky and Shabnam toil in the brickworks. When the owner of the garage dies, Lalloo finds work as a chauffeur for a wealthy family and determines to finance Shabnam's dowry, as she'd prefer an arranged marriage to servitude. What starts out as a stultifying tale of hopelessness becomes a fast-paced drama full of betrayals, escapes, intrigue, and self-sacrificing heroism. It's enlivened by charming scenes of street life and the bazaar, stark contrasts between the lives of the well-to-do and the servant classes, and unforgettable villains and allies. Hassan proves herself a gifted storyteller. Agent: Hellie Ogden, Janklow and Nesbit Assoc. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Survival and improving one's quality of life are at the root of this superb debut novel from London-based Hassan; it's being compared to Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. On the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, a young boy named Lalloo desperately wants to free himself and his family from a life of indentured servitude and brutal poverty. In order to pay off a debt, Lalloo, his young sisters, and their parents are forced to make thousands of bricks each day. Lalloo's brother has been brutally murdered, but the boy finds solace in a friend named Salman. At age seven, Lalloo is sent away to learn how to repair cars, a possible means of escaping the family's conditions. Years pass, and Lalloo is eventually hired as a driver for a wealthy Lahore family. These people change his life, while the good-natured, hard-working Lalloo saves money to rescue his family, with the help of Salman and others. There are many twists and turns to the story, and Hassan beautifully crafts a very believable tale that also unravels the mystery behind the murder of Lalloo's brother. VERDICT A highly recommended and heart-wrenching story that is all too realistic, as bonded labor continues in Pakistan and around the world today.--Lisa Rohrbaugh
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young man plots his family's escape from slavery in modern Pakistan. Hassan's debut novel centers on Lalloo, a young man living in the outskirts of Lahore. When he was 7, his older brother, Jugnu, was killed under mysterious circumstances on the grounds of the bhatti, or labor camp, where his family made bricks to work off an insurmountable debt. To earn money for the family and escape the bhatti's degradations, he was soon sent to work at a garage; now in his 20s, he works as a driver for a wealthy family. Lalloo's lifelong determination to get his family out of the bhatti accelerates when his father falls ill and his sister is engaged, prompting a need for more money. The plot of the novel turns on Lalloo's ill-fated attempts to secure funds, ranging from begging to blackmail to outright theft. In the process, he exposes the corruption of the system he's been trapped into. Hassan, a playwright, poet, and Lahore native, has a gift for lyricism and metaphor, particularly around the fireflies of the title, symbols of a freedom that seems remote to the point of otherworldliness. But she's also careful not to sugarcoat a narrative that uses various euphemisms--"peshgi," "indenture"--to rationalize slavery. (One early scene has Lalloo literally mired in muck and sewage.) This is all embedded in a dense but speedy plot as Lalloo schemes for cash, explores the circumstances of Jugnu's murder, and negotiates a budding romance with a childhood friend. Some plot twists defy believability, and some characters deliver cardboard dialogue, but throughout, Hassan cannily reveals the ways that a broken financial and caste system in "an upside-down world" thrusts its poorest people into making rash decisions. A socially savvy study of caste and its abuses. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
