From Nectar In A Sieve written by Kamala Markandaya

I just finished reading this book yesterday and enjoyed  it on a somewhat personal level. It's a story of a woman in India who throughout the book struggles to make money and buy and eat food while splitting portions with her family.

We all have money troubles from time to time, but now I can always think of this book that really shows me my own problems are hardly a big deal compared to watching your own family starve to death because there is no food to sell or buy.

Now this excerpt from the book stood out to me because it was painfully, yet beautifully written:

For this I have given you birth my son, that you should lie in the end at my feet with ashes in your face and coldness in your limbs and yourself departed without trace, leaving this huddle of bones and flesh without meaning.

Already I think, the eyes must be closed, though death has glazed them, and I do so; the jaw must be tied, for it is sagging, I put a bandage about it; the body must be washed and I wash it; and Ira comes to help and cleanses the mouth which I have forgotten to do. These things were you, now there is no connection whatever; the sorrow within me is not for this body which has suffered and in suffering has let slip the spirit, but for you, my son.

...

Now not even a heap of bones: only a few ashes to show that  once a man has lived.

Another line from the book:

Only money can make the rope stretch, only money