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Saroo has vivid memories of Kamlu, his brothers and sister that are full of affection, fun, and adventure as well as hunger, factors that led to the circumstances through which he became lost. The memoir reminds the reader that a child experiences their life in their own particular way. After a childhood marred by alcoholism, poverty, and neglect, Sue became determined to adopt children whom she might rescue as she rescued herself. Sue Brierly’s past is another central part of Saroo’s story. Living in the nowhere land of this poor community, the family barely survived. (Interestingly, when Saroo discovers his mother as an adult, he finds she has converted to Islam).
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This left her marginalized within a village split into Hindu and Muslim neighborhoods and stigmatized as a woman who failed to keep her husband. Hindu by birth, Kamlu married a Muslim who later deserted her and their four children. Kamlu’s struggle to raise her family was aggravated by India’s essential cultural/political divide. It also relates the stories of his two mothers: Kamlu and Sue. The memoir adds more to the story including the conditions of Saroo’s family of birth, his survival as a street child, and how he found his family of origin twenty-five years later. Should you read the book if you’ve seen the film? Yes, absolutely in fact, read the book and see the film which is visually and emotionally moving. Born into an impoverished family in a rural village in India, Saroo went missing at age five, inadvertently traveled over 1000 miles from home, was rescued from the streets of Kolkata and became the adopted son of the Brierly family of Hogarth, Tasmania (Australia). Saroo Brierley’s memoir, A Long Way Home, was the basis for the 2014 Academy Award nominated film, Lion, that featured much-praised performances by Dev Patel as Saroo and Nicole Kidman as his mother by adoption, Sue Brierly.