A Life Less Ordinary: A Memoir

By Baby Halder

Book Overview

When she was very young, Baby Halder was abandoned by her mother and left with a cruel, abusive father. She was married off at twelve to a man twice her age who beat her. At fourteen, she was a mother herself. Her early life was marked by overwhelming challenges and heartbreak until, exhausted and desperate, she fled with her three children to Delhi, to work as a maid in some of the city's wealthiest homes. Expected to serve her employers' every demand, she faced a staggering workload that often left her no time to care for her own children. But she never complained, for such is the lot of the poor in modern-day India.

Written without a trace of self-pity, A Life Less Ordinary is a shocking look deep inside a world of poverty and subjugation that few outsiders know about--and an inspiring true story of one remarkable woman's strength, courage, and determination to soar above her circumstances.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061373982
• ISBN13: 9780061373985
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Important book, important topic.

I read this book in basically one sitting. It was a page-turner, in that I had to keep reading to find out how it would end. "End" is a funny word for the ending because the author Baby Halder is still so young with a long life ahead of her. This is a phenomenal book, not just because it tells Baby's story, but because it tells a story that millions of women around the world share. And we need to hear this story. And what makes it more phenomenal is that the author was able to break free from abuse and poverty to write an internationally published book and share her story of a life less ordinary. I spent much of the book wondering how I could've dealt with the loss of my mother or the tolerated murder of my sister or the unimagineable thought of my 12 year old daughter getting married and having children, or if I would've had the courage to get on a train with my children and nothing more to try to find a better life. An issue with the writing in this book is that the author frequently switches from 1st to 3rd person, but I looked at it like less of a grammatical error and more of the author speaking in 3rd person when the topic was very painful. I really highly recomend this book.