This is a strong novel that truly captured my interest. First, the setting is vivid, so well described that I felt I was really there, experiencing Pakistan through the eyes of a young wife. As for the plot, it resisted predictability and did not cave in to any "happily ever after" clichés, just like Shabanu. I appreciate that realism and the vividness of the story. I also admire the way Shabanu was shown to be so brave, and yet also full of doubts and contradicting loyalties. The writer laid out her hero’s choices and showed us how she struggled to make her decisions, and this enhanced both plot and character. tAt the same time, Haveli is not as compelling as is Shabanu. Part of this is due to the fact that the author didn't do as good a job of portraying character, in Haveli. Especially when it came to Zabo, I felt like I didn't know her very well. This absence of character development stemmed from the point of view. I can understand why the author chose third person for the telling of this story; for the sake of the rich description and the heightening of danger which is involved in this story, the third person point of view makes sense. Most of the time, we experience things along with Shabanu, but there are lots of other times when the POV shifts from person to person. I think the third person should have been more limited, so that we only felt things along with Zabo and Shabanu. I missed feeling that closeness with Shabanu, that intensity of experience which came in the first novel partially through the use of the first person point of view.
I liked Haveli. It continues the story of Shabanu from Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind. In this book, Shabanu, now 18, has been married for about 6 years and she has a daughter who is almost 5 years old. Shabanu's husband is wealthy, and he has many wives and servants. Her husband Rahim is also much older. He is in his fifties. Rahim's older wives are jealous of Shabanu because Rahim in only interested in taking Shabanu to his bed. Also, the other wives look down on Shabanu because she is uncultured and uneducated. When there are parties or cultural activities, Shabanu is left at home because she would not fit in with the upper-class and would be an embarrassment. The other wives torment Shabanu whenever they can and are a threat to her child. Shabanu is worried about what will happen to her and her child, Mumtaz, when Rahim dies. Since Rahim is so much older than she, Shabanu worries about this often.The book shows how married women are treated in Pakistan. It shows what their lives are like in an upper class household where there are many wives all jostling for the attention and favor of one man. In Pakistan, girls are married off as soon as they are able to conceive, at the age of 12 or 13. As an American woman reading this book, I had to try to keep an open mind about this practice to full enjoy the book. The book shows how little control women have over their lives in Pakistan.
What do You think about Haveli (1995)?
Suite de Shabanu, Haveli se passe environ six ans après les évènements du premier livre. Shabanu, quatrième épouse de Rahim, un homme de 40 ans son ainé, et leur fille Mumtaz, sont les bouc-émissaires des autres épouses. Pour échapper à ce traitement, Shabanu demande à déménager à l’Haveli, la maison de ville de la famille. Et là, elle rencontre Omar, dont elle tombe amoureuse, et puis, son beau-frère commence à prendre des terres à Rahim qui cherche à se venger, ce qui aura des conséquences dramatiques, bla bla bla…L’histoire n’est pourtant pas inintéressante, mais je n’ai pas senti de véritable connexion avec le style de l’auteur et son univers. Certaines scènes qui auraient dû créer une certaine émotion, que ce soit la tristesse, la surprise, n’ont fait aucun effet sur moi. Les mots sont restés des mots. Sans aucune résonance particulière.
—Éclat-de-lumière
this is the sequel to Shabanu, the story of a desert woman in Pakistan. In this book she has been married to her older husband for five years and has a young daughter named Mumtaz. She goes to live in the haveli, which is a walled in house in the city, in order to stay away from her husband's other two wives who do terrible things to her and Mumtaz. At the end of the book her husband has been killed and she has to pretend to be dead in order to stay safe from her husband's brother who wants to m
—Marty
I wish I could give out half stars! I would like to give this one 3.5 stars. The story itself I think is worth 4 stars. It was a good book, was interesting, and by the end I did care about what was going on. This is the sequel to the Newberry Honor winning Shabanu, and continues the story of her life after she is married. After I got into the story, it went quickly, and I was interested in how the story ended. However, I am giving it 3 stars (or 3.5...) because it took me a very long time to get interested in reading this book. When I put it down, I felt no need to pick it back up. I think almost a month went by between the first 6 chapters and the next time I picked the book up. It was hard for me to find the interest I needed to keep reading. By the end, I liked the book a lot more than I had at the beginning, and I will read the third book in Shabanu's life, just to see what happened, but this was definitely not a favorite. Really, I could have stopped with just having read Shabanu and I would have been totally fine. Oh well. It was still worth the short time it took me to read.
—Ashley
