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Anita Desai’s The Village by the Sea is an exciting and moving story about life in an Indian coastal village and life in the unimaginably big city of Bombay. It is the story of thirteen-year-old Lila and her twelve-year-old brother, Hari. As the book begins, Lila is wading into the sea to bring scarlet hibiscus, sweet-smelling lilies, and butter-yellow allamanda flowers to the sacred rock the fishermen’s wives pray to, just as her mother did before her father had to sell his boat to pay his debts and her mother fell ill. Now Lila and Hari must care for their ailing parents as well as their two younger sisters. Sensing adventure and a chance to save his family, and possibly his village, Hari impulsively joins a group of farmers and fishermen traveling to Bombay to protest the construction of a fertilizer factory that threatens to pollute the coastline and destroy their livelihood. Will the protest succeed? Can Hari survive in the city, and can Lila manage at home without him? Through their own resources, and the kindnesses of strangers, Hari and Lila must find a way to “Adapt! Adapt!” as their ornithologist friend urges, just as the birds and animals must do to survive.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 16, 2019 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781681373522
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781681373522
- File size: 1926 KB
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 1070
- Text Difficulty: 6-9
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Reviews
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July 1, 2019
Desai's gorgeous novel pulls readers in to the world of young Lila and Hari, struggling siblings growing up in the isolated Western Indian village of Thul; both the characters and the place are on the cusp of change. In lucid prose, Desai engages the senses, describing the sigh of the ocean as the tide turns; the children's drunken father snoring in a corner; the village women wading into the sea to meet the fishing fleet and then spilling baskets full of shining, slithering fish onto the sand.(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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November 1, 2019
Desai's gorgeous novel, winner of the 1983 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, pulls readers in to the world of young Lila and Hari, struggling siblings growing up in the isolated Western Indian village of Thul; both the characters and the place are on the cusp of change. In lucid prose Desai engages all five senses, describing the sigh of the ocean as the tide turns; the children's drunken father snoring in a dark corner; the village women wading into the sea to meet the fishing fleet and then spilling baskets full of shining, slithering fish onto the sand; the profusion of "scarlet hibiscus blooms, sweet-smelling spider lilies and bright butter-yellow allamanda flowers." Almost every page contains a description of such immediacy that the reader is transported to Thul or, subsequently, to Bombay-where Hari goes to try to prevent the government's plan for a factory in Thul that will destroy their way of life, only to learn skills that will allow him to adapt to the coming new economy and environment. "If you want to survive, you will have to change...The wheel turns and turns and turns." Martha V. Parravano(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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