The Village by the Sea (A Puffin Book)

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Phil Burgess, Group Director of The Architects Design Group, said: “Mount Wise is a very special place with a unique collection of Georgian buildings set in a remarkable landscape in the heart of an urban area. The cooler temperatures are welcome, even though Hari still has to work hard and cannot sleep in the park anymore. Kamal shrieks that it was the drunk brother who had demanded money from them, and that the brother hates them and had already threatened to kill Pinto because their father owed him money.

After a long day of getting breakfast, packing lunches, making beds, cooking and cleaning, at last they get their children to bed and prepare to have a well earned rest and what do children do? With a wide range of homes available we are certainly expecting this new village to be a real success.Ramu informs him that the Government is going to build a big factory in the village—in fact, many factories! Meanwhile back home Lila struggles through her mothers illness and the heavy load of responsibilty on her shoulders. There is no way these changes can be all bad, of course, and Hari's understanding that change and growth are necessary is wise and useful. Hari tired of the same old work with nothing changing for the better decides to run away to Bombay a big city to find work, by joining the protest.

The de Silvas have brought a lot of luggage with them, and the children wonder if they have come to the village to stay permanently. Hari visits his mother in the hospital and is thrilled to see that the years of illness have fallen away. The novel ends with the family contentedly celebrating, grateful for the positive changes in their lives.This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. The man asks for their “rascal father,” and threatens to drag him out of the house even though Lila tells him their father has gone out. The novel focuses on how fast Hari and Lila are forced to grow up before their time and how they adapt to their new living conditions.

The eldest children, Lila and Hari, are only thirteen and twelve, respectively, but it is up to them to eke out a living for themselves and their family. The book begins incredibly slowly, the excitement does not seep in until after the halfway mark, when Bombay comes into picture and changes things. Desai brilliantly portrays the issues in the village of Thul, doomed for destruction b the advance of industrialisation. Even though he tells himself, “He could not afford dreams, he must be practical and think out a scheme” (45), he is a bit “excited to think that life held so many possibilities” (48).

Given, however, that this book was written for young adults, I can honestly say that it serves its purpose well, and that today its message is deeply needed to help us remember what it's like to survive under truly harsh conditions. Hira-bai tells them that she saw the local medicine man this morning and that she will find him and send him to them.

He befriends a watchmaker and learns from him about watches all the time saving his meager earnings to take home back to his family. Biju has hired workmen from Alibagh, the district capital, even though the Thul men have been building boats all their lives. The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai – for mature 4th graders and up – Realistic Fiction- quite the powerful book, I couldn’t stop reading this one. The family met altogether at their house, in the small village by the sea, and they celebrated Diwali together. But, in my opinion, they too get very repetitive over the book with the author deciding to describe either very mundane things or things already described before in details.Sometimes even this becomes an impossibility and the city is rejected as much as it is seen to reject.