Fifteen-year-old Aaron is an impoverished Coptic Christian in Egypt, a Zabbaleen, who spends his days digging through garbage to find broken glass that he can resell in order to survive. Author’s Note.

The writing is amazing. The author creates such vivid imagery that awakens all of your senses. Even though this is Aaron's voice, it is uneven to the point of being unrelated stories. I found it hard to follow and only kept reading because I loved the writing. The ending is thought provoking.

Pros: Exceptional, sensory writing will draw you into an unknown but very real world. The journey is jaw-dropping and will give you a lot to think about.

Read whether we recommend buying or borrowing this book in the full review at The Reading Tub®. You can add your review, too.

Amazon summary: Fifteen-year-old Aaron lives amongst the rubbish piles in the slums of Cairo. His job? To collect broken glass. His life? Wasted. His hope? To find a future he can believe in. Today in Cairo, Egypt, there is a city within a city: a city filled with garbage--literally. As one of the Zabbaleen people, Aaron makes his living sorting through waste. When his family kicks him out, his only alternatives are to steal, beg, or take the most nightmarish garbage-collecting job of all. Perera- author of Guantanamo Boy. Pair with 'Trash' by Andy Mulligan. Both deal with children surviving on rubbish and waste. One set in Egypt and one set in India. ( )

social understanding, Egypt, realistic fiction

The Glass Collector by Anna Perera follows Aaron, a Zabbaleen (Coptic Christian) teen. The Zabbaleens are the garbage collectors of Egypt. They collect it in horse drawn carriages and recycle it and feed the food scraps to their live stock (pigs).

The book opens with Aaron believing he sees the Virgin Mary in in the glass of one of the tourist hotels. That strong opening with a hint of magical realism set up expectations for the direction this novel was going to take. But after that initial sighting, the book settles into a far more mundane routine of collecting garbage, talking about family (the good and bad of it) and thinking about girls.

Aaron begins to steel perfume instead of collecting the empty bottles. Of course his thievery (while completely understandable given his situation) has consequences.

While the descriptions working with garbage and living in extreme poverty are well done, the tone of the book remains flat. There's no ebb and flow to the emotional impact. Aaron does his thing but he never truly comes alive. ( )