Trash by Andy Mulligan

I really wanted to read this book after reading Ms Comer's review coz it was really interesting and i completely agree . :D I think that the title just gives it away , yeah you guessed it , its about trash. And as much as i hate to say this , its about poverty and how it affects people . This book is set in the Philippines (where i come from) and i can say dat i agree with the author , it is pretty messy back home. Anyways , the story follows the adventures of three best friends Raphael , Gardo and Jun Jun (aka Rat) and their lives as dumpsite boys digging through the Behala dumpsite in Manila hoping to find something valuable to sell . However , one day Raphael finds something that immediately gets the police on their tail and its gonna take a very long time to solve the mystery . (and yes , it involves LOTS of puzzle solving) But eventually , after lots of twists and turns and help from their friends , they solve the BIG puzzle . :D I won't focus about the plot itself in this review coz it's just gonna ruin it for you guys and you can't really tell half of this story's plot coz then the mystery's just gona confuse you . LOL . :P Moving on , what i loved about this book is the fact that it is written in different point of views , what i mean by this is dat d author splits the story in parts , like chapters and in each chapter , each character updates d reader on what they are going through . I realy like this touch by the author coz in one page , its Rapahael saying something about how he feels with their current situation then the next page Gardo says something COMPLETELY opposite to how Gardo feels . i think the author did this to show each character's personality in a unique way (WHICH I THOUGHT WAS VERY CLEVER :D) By doing this , we as the reader can figure out the mystery behind the story ourselves since the story is told from different perspectives meaning everyone tells the reader what they see with their own eyes and how they feel about it. Finally , i also like the fact that this book is written in an author's point of view that is not FILIPINO . i dont mean to be racist but , i kinda liked that coz it showed me how the author viewed the Philippines , how he felt about writing about the Philippines . Because me , as a Filipino, i am 100% certain dat if a Filipino author wrote "Trash" in their point of view , it will be COMPLETELY different mainly coz the Filipino author sees it in a different way coz he/she knows wat its like in the Philippines therefore he/she wouldve written it in a different structure . please comment !! :D Vince Exconde