Fifteen Lanes

March 1, 2016
Noor has called a brothel home all her life. The sex workers are her family, and as a devadasi, she is destined to follow in her mother's footsteps. Her only respite is school. There, she excels in her studies and blossoms among her classmates. But it is a new friend--a foreigner--who helps her escape her old life forever. Laidlaw brings Kamathipura, a poor neighborhood in Mumbai, to life with her detailed prose. The author handles the delicate subject matter with care, balancing the desperate living conditions with glimpses of Noor's joys and aspirations. Grace, a white expat student at an elite private school, struggles with the departure of her university-age brother and best friend. She meets Noor during her school-mandated community service, which brings their storylines together. The inclusion of Grace as a second narrator is distracting since the focus of the book is wholly on Noor's journey. Grace's ordeal is compelling in its own right and would have been better served in a separate book; instead it is subsumed under the wider arc of Noor's trials and seems trivial by contrast. The alternating points of view force readers to compare the two girls, making it easy to reduce Noor to her poverty and Grace to her privilege. Full of complicated characters from across Mumbai's social classes, the novel challenges readers' expectations. (author's note) (Fiction. 14-18)

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April 1, 2016

Gr 9 Up-Two drastically different stories of teenage heartache take place in the overcrowded, bustling city of Mumbai. Noor, the 14-year-old daughter of a prostitute, dutifully attends school and earns top marks, but she sees no escape from the deadly trap of the 15 lanes that house Mumbai's sex trade. Grace, 15, lives grandly on the other side of the city, but that does not mean she is any less desperate. Lonely after losing her only friend, Grace is "catfished" by students at her school. Thrown together by chance, Grace and Noor find that, despite their differences, they can help each other escape the cycles of pain into which they have fallen. Readers will love the complexity and authenticity of this story, even if they know very little about the lives of sex workers in India. The protagonists' voices make the story believable and unputdownable. Laidlaw's secondary characters-the teens' friends, relatives, and enemies-are just as fleshed out as Noor and Grace themselves. There is no easy happy ending for the girls, but their story shows the strength and beauty of the human spirit in a way that young adults will appreciate. With graphic portrayals of sex work and self-harm, this book may not be for every student, but it will be appreciated by fans of Meg Medina's Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass and Ellen Hopkins's work. VERDICT An honest and raw portrait of teen girls for most YA collections.-Ashley Fetterolf, Indian Creek Upper School, Crownsville, MD

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2016
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Noor has grown up in a Mumbai brothel, expected to become a sex worker like her mother and all the other women she knows. Her mother has sacrificed to send Noor to a good school, where she excels and dares to dream, but now that Noor is 14, the brothel owner intends to sell her. Fifteen-year-old Grace, a privileged but lonely white expat at Mumbai International School, has taken to cutting to ease negative feelings from vicious bullying. When Grace begins school-mandated community service with an NGO working to prevent second-generation sex trafficking, she meets Noor, who joined the program to ensure she can stay in school. A kinship emerges between the two girls, despite their differences, and helps them rescue each other. Laidlaw doesn't flinch from the horrifying details of the desperate and dangerous lives of Mumbai's poorest women. Noor's strength and determination are inspiring, while her dramatic rescue is realistically shaded with true lossfew others are saved. Comparatively, Grace's story feels minor, though her voice and suffering ring with authenticity. This heartbreaking and hopeful novel will appeal to readers of gripping contemporary stories such as Patricia McCormick's Sold (2006) and E. R. Frank's Dime (2015).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)