The Good Girls

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents The Good Girls written and read by Sonia Faleiro.

‘Narrative reportage at its best. Just extraordinary’ Fatima Bhutto
'A page-turner, a feminist text, and an essential read that is deeply empathetic' Deepa Anappara, author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

A masterly and agenda-setting inquest into how the deaths of two teenage girls shone a light into the darkest corners of a nation

Katra Sadatganj. A tiny village in western Uttar Pradesh. A community bounded by tradition and custom; where young women are watched closely, and know what is expected of them.

It was an ordinary night when two girls, Padma and Lalli, went missing. The next day, their bodies were found – hanging in the orchard, their clothes muddied.

In the ensuing months, the investigation into their deaths would implode everything that their small community held to be true, and instigated a national conversation about sex, honour and violence.

The Good Girls returns to the scene of Padma and Lalli’s short lives and shocking deaths, daring to ask: what is the human cost of shame?

Critics Review

Sonia Faleiro ’s meticulously researched investigation results in a powerful, unflinching account of misogyny, female shame and the notion of honour
Observer
A haunting piece of narrative reporting that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned. It is difficult to read but difficult to put down. For understanding the challenges facing young women today it is essential reading
Sunday Times
At once shocking and mundane, quiet and loud, understated and savage
Times Literary Supplement
Faleiro’s pithy, cliffhanging chapters fuse true crime with big-picture analysis, blending data with interviews and detail ... A powerful indictment of a society failing its most vulnerable members
Economist
Transfixing; it has the pacing and mood of a whodunit, but no clear reveal
New York Times
A puzzle with a surprise at the end ... A riveting, terrible tale, one all too common, but Faleiro’s gorgeous prose makes it bearable
New York Times Book Review
A desperate reflection on the status of women ... Faleiro has taken exceptional pains to recreate the events as they unfolded
Spectator
Traces the tragic mystery surrounding the deaths of two teenagers found hanging in an Indian mango orchard
New York Times, Recommended Reads
A compelling whodunnit ... Faleiro writes sensitively about her subjects’ actions and motivations, while the investigation reaches its final devastating revelation
Financial Times
An insightful work of reportage that highlights how gender intersects with class and caste in Indian society. It's a page-turner, a feminist text, and an essential read that is deeply empathetic towards its two main subjects who no longer have a voice
Deepa Anappara, author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
A compassionate, timely and necessary book that explores the issues of sex, violence, shame, honour and what it is to be a girl growing up in modern India
Literary Review
Searing ... A riveting - sometimes astonishing - work of forensic journalism that chronicles the girls’ lives as well as the circumstances of their death
Wall Street Journal
A major piece of reportage ... Makes for tough but necessary reading
Cosmopolitan Online, 69 books by Black and POC authors out in 2021
A stunning look at an investigation that was more about caste culture, poverty and the oppression of women than justice
People
Narrative reportage at its best. Just extraordinary
Fatima Bhutto
In this true story of the mysterious death of two girls, Sonia Faleiro confronts us with what it means to be young, poor, powerless and most importantly, female, in much of today's India ... The Good Girls left me shattered
Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize winner
Expertly recreates the conflicting narrative of what happened in a rural part of India ... It is a shocking read
Human Givens Journal
Praise for Sonia Faleiro: ‘A tour de force of reportage, whose depth, insight and resonance make it the equal of the best fiction
SUNDAY TIMES
A small masterpiece of observation … Opens up a hidden world with startling insight and intimacy
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Faleiro brings a novelist’s eye for detail and a depth of empathy to her work. A magnificent book of reportage that is also endowed with all the terror and beauty of art
KIRAN DESAI
Does what every good piece of reportage ought to: took me to a place I couldn't have gone by myself
HARI KUNZRU
A tour de force of heartrending reportage ... which blends rigorous journalistic research with the narrative skills of a novelist
INDEPENDENT
[An] intimate and valuable book of literary reportage that will break your heart several times over
NEW YORK TIMES
It is useless to describe the pathos and singular power of this book
SPECTATOR
So compelling that it invites from us the question of exactly what might constitute genius in non-fiction
THE NATIONAL
Brilliant ... It's most outstanding quality to my eye is the window it offers on the widespread sexual repression that exists in India today, and the murky middle-class morality that rules it
GUARDIAN
She manages to evoke shock, rage, and laughter … A moving testament
LITERARY REVIEW

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