This book is one which made me reflect on so many things including the smallest everyday decisions. One of the best middle grade fiction I have ever read. The writing was simple and it was really easy to read. I didn't like how it distanced me from the story and from the characters though. Anita Desai's descriptions were okay but not great. There was a lot of colourful imagery in the book and that was great. I did like how women were represented in this book. They were represented as the ones who kept families running.

Jagu might have a restaurant with a lot of customers, but he still lives in a slum, Hari realizes. The hillside is muddy and the huts are derelict; Hari wonders why Jagu brought him here. The huts cannot keep the rain out. It is dark inside.During the monsoon season, things are tough in Thul as well. Try as they might, the girls cannot keep water out of the hut. Fires are smoky and the huts are damp. There is no fish for the village. Bela and Kamal are playing. Hari scolds them because their clothes are dusty and Lila must wash them. He has caught nothing, which the girls notice. Pinto the dog comes running down the path. Pinto was named after the man who had given him to the children. This man did “business,” and had scammed their father and many others after collecting money for the bus fare to Goa and then vanishing without ever delivering the job offers he had promised to the village men. Lila, Kamal, and Bela love Pinto, but the dog reminds Hari of his father’s stupidity. Another massive storm breaks out in Bombay and there is chaos in the streets. There are only a few customers in the restaurant so the boys get to listen to the radio. To Hari’s distress, he hears reports of fisherman from Alibagh lost in the storm. He is desperately worried and cannot stem the tide of his memories. He longs for his family and his people and his home.

Village By The Sea is the perfect book for the lazy afternoons. It is a unique blend of descriptions and a good story of hope, despair, poverty and how life can change with the simplest of things. The narrative was believable because none of the changes were really drastic or magical but it left the reader with a positive feeling. The story shall remain etched for long in my mind because of the way it connected. I will give it a near perfect rating despite the flaws I have pointed out because ultimately it won my heart in the poignant way it brought to life a little village called Thul, much like how Malgudi once captured my heart. There is no comparison between the geniuses of both but Desai's characters Lila, Hari, Bela, Kamal, Mr. Panwallah are similar to people I have met in life, who seem like people I know personally because her words brought them to life. And for that, she receives my wholehearted applause. Jagu agrees to let Hari work in his restaurant so Hari sends home a postcard letting his sisters know where he is and that he is going to bring his earnings to them. Life is hard for Hari in Bombay but he works hard. While working for Jagu, Hari meets Mr. Panwallah who takes Hari under his wing and starts to teach him how to make watches and how to repair them. I don't know why I read it in the first place, well, it was a gift and maybe that's why. Not head over heels on it, not at all.Monsoon season is hard for both Hari in Bombay and the villagers by the sea. When Hari hears on the radio that fishing boats out of Alibagh were lost in a storm, he decides he must return home. He knows he belongs with his family by the sea. He decides to go at Diwali, and continues to learn the watchmaking trade from Mr. Panwallah in the interim. Disturbed and agitated by the conditions at his place, Hari runs away to Bombay, leaving behind Lila to take care of their parents and sisters. The village is angry. Hari goes to the market to search for ice to cool their mother’s forehead. Hari notices a large crowd outside the temple on his way. Boys, fishermen, farmers, women, and all sorts of diverse villagers have gathered to hear a young man speak. The man has come from the district capital of Alibagh. He is concerned about the string of fourteen villages that are threatened by the new factory development, telling them that the waste from the factory will be dumped into the sea and will kill the fish. What will they do without the sea?

Meena Khorana (1991). The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography of English-language Books. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.131. ISBN 978-0-313-25489-5 . Retrieved 13 August 2015. Despite Desai’s dissatisfaction with how she altered or embellished the real-life experiences of the family, the novel doesn’t avoid or dramatically mitigate the suffering the children feel and endure. She wants to show the changes occurring in India and how real people are affected, especially children. She explains what suffering is like in India to provide context for her literary aims: “Life is extremely brutal in India as it is in most countries. But most countries are very much better at obscuring the brutality, at veiling it so that one is only intermittently aware of the horrors. I think what's so overpowering about India is that all the human experiences which we surely share wherever we live, all over the world are all on the surface. Nothing screens them from your view. You feel exhausted and battered by all that India throws at you. At the same time it's extremely honest, it's extremely open, and it's extremely basic. If brutality and harshness are so obvious in India, so are affection and family ties and friendships. They're heightened, too, in India. They're also very much more open and vivid. And I suppose they're what makes life wonderfully livable there: the warmth and the color and the exuberance one misses elsewhere.” The Khanekars’ property is littered with rubbish, neglected and shabby; the brothers who owned the land sold their crop groves and other assets to pay for toddy. Their wives all left them, and only their mother (Hira-bai) is left to care for them. Angus Macdonald, Development Advisor, added: “We are not trying to build a city centre development; we will be creating a waterside village. The launch in September was a real celebration of both the history of Mount Wise and its future. Recommendation: I strongly recommend this book to people who may have thought they are poor and something they do not have enough to live. Also, to foreigners especially who want to know more about India and about how the people live in India. I really appreciated about author’s writing style. She has a beautiful writhing skill, which is smooth and dainty. Thus, I felt I became Lila, and I felt all the feelings which Lila would felt about her family’s predicaments while I was reading.Also, I have to admit that a huge amount of credit should go to the author for venturing towards a path few had trodden upon. This book was published in 1982 when ‘Indian Writing in English’ was not such a common thing. Sure, there had been the likes of R.K.Narayan who had already published a few of his works, and Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ had already been out, but it was not as common as it is now. Very few people were actually aware and even those aware would criticize the authors for not writing in their native language. It was in the 80’s that few prominent authors gave the push that Indian English Literature needed – Anita Desai being one of them. The story portrays the city, as seen though the eyes of a small village boy, as frightening, noisy and dirty, and some parts as huge and glimmering with the lights of massive buildings. The book is about the challenges a family and the people of their village face as a result of development seeping in, although desirable it is irreversible. What stands out in Anita Desai’s writing is the ethereal picture she creates with her descriptions. The children are the real heroes in this story. I loved the confidence in her characters, their fighting spirit and eagerness to explore and adapt to new situations or surroundings. Some parts of the plot did not really seem important to the storyline, nevertheless it clearly depicted rural India.

Then there is that ever present message of ‘Hope’. You would think that kids like that - growing up in extreme poverty, with an alcoholic father and practically non-existing mother, with no supervision or guidance - would end up as a bad lot. But no, even in such a situation, it is possible for a ‘Hari’ to emerge and a ‘Lila’ to thrive. Even at the worst situations the young ones never lost hope. May be it was their innocence or maybe it’s just who they were. Help is always there for those who really need it – be it in form of a Jaggu or a Panwallah or the DeSilva family.Desai's subject matter may be stereotypical, but her treatment and sensitive prose give depth to the story, Every minute detail and image... assumes meaning and fits into the intricate, multi-layered pattern of the novel." [3] Adaptation [ edit ]