The Blue Notebook
by James A. Levine.  New York:  New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009. Pp. 206

Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl

The author of this novel is James A. Levine, a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic. While this is a work of fiction, it is based on the doctor’s interviews with child prostitutes in Mumbai, India. His commitments to the plight of such children – both female and male – is specified more directly in terms of the book royalties, all of which are donated to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.icmec.org) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (www.missingkids.com) and www.BatukFoundation.org.

The novel is narrated by a young girl sold into prostitution by her father. The girl, Batuk, has been taught to read and write and keeps a diary of her daily experiences as a prostitute. Her euphemism for her work is “making sweet-cake.” It is clear her life in her small cage is a daily round of sexual usage and abuses of all sorts.  

Batuk’s imagination provides an escape from her abusers as well as hope for what is actually a non-existent future. Her efforts to maintain her soul and her sanity began with her father’s betrayal of her as they travel to Mumbai. There Batuk is turned over to those who prepare her for her daily life of prostitution.  Because of her unusual beauty she is variously used as a party participant among the rich. In the work’s horrific, violent conclusion, she is taken to luxurious surroundings to initiate a young man before his family plans to marry him off.

Levine’s prose is gentle, full of lovely daily images which only serve to emphasize the horror and adjustments the young girl is forced to make in terms of her body, her personhood and her life. As she recalls her youth: “I liked to be near the river, though. I was entranced by the music of the water and the dance that light played on it…. I appreciate many years later that the Common Street is a river, too; back and forth people flow, and containers, cars, and small buses. The flow never ceases to connect the world to me, to take me to it.” ( 70).

This work underscores a global problem, including one that exists in every state in America, of human trafficking. In the reviewer’s state of Pennsylvania recent police activity discovered young Asian women forced into indentured servitude in order to pay off their handlers, live in forced isolation and serve the public in nail salons. The topic of this book is more prevalent than one might think and the thoughtful are urged to review documents related to this topic as they are found on the United Nations website and denominational sources.