Young Adult Literature; Quest; Realistic Fiction
Young Adult Literature
How could a novel about human trafficking on the other side of the world possibly be classified as young adult literature? It's actually easy to see how this happens. For one, the story line is about a young adult—how one person transitions from childhood to adulthood, to be precise.
For another, the language of the book is stark, beautiful, sparse… and not that difficult. In other words, the story is accessible to adolescent readers. And thirdly, it treats a topic that, although controversial, includes experiences other young adults may share with the main character: manipulation, betrayal by those whom she should be able to trust, depression, sexual abuse, and friendship.
So even though the content of the novel may appear at first glance to be beyond young adults' comprehension, it's not.
Quest
Lakshmi's story pretty closely follows the classic hero's journey. A hero wants to obtain something and then return home. There is a call to adventure; Lakshmi wants to leave her mountain and wonders about the world beyond it. There is the standing on the threshold; Lakshmi's beginning to transform from girl to woman, from child to adult at the beginning of her journey. And then there's the journey itself; Lakshmi's journey is both physical in nature (Nepal to India) and also psychological (old life to new life).
Of course she hits the abyss, which in the classic hero's journey is both death and rebirth. One way to interpret her abyss is the death of her virginity and rebirth as a working girl in the brothel. But that's a little depressing. Another way to interpret the story is that her abyss is the entire time she spends at Happiness House and her rebirth is when she leaves it with the American. Or that her abyss is the loss of hope and then the rebirth of hope, which would mean she hits several abysses. (Abyssi? Abysseousses? Gah.) Like much of literature, interpretation is pretty important.
And like any quest worth questing for, Lakshmi's ends on a note of hope. While in other books we might see our hero actually make it home, Sold ends on a slightly less certain note—with Lakshmi leaving Happiness House with the third American. And while we don't know with any certainty how the next leg of Lakshmi's journey will unfold, we have a strong hunch that things are finally starting to look up for her. It isn't a tidy ending by any stretch, but it does feel like a chapter in Lakshmi's lifelong journey has come to a close.
Realistic Fiction
In addition to writing about human trafficking, Patricia McCormick has written novels about war, self-mutilation, and child soldiers. She does a ton of research for all her books, and Sold is no exception. For this bookshe went to India and Nepal, she toured the red light district of Calcutta, and she communicated with girls who had been rescued. Because she's trained as a journalist, she used all her senses and took scrupulous notes—and everything McCormick did to prepare lends the novel an air of authenticity.
One way to classify realistic fiction is that the elements of the story could actually happen. Lakshmi's story is more than that: it does happen, every day.