Azhar Abidi

At the backdrop of the older generation holding on to the "good old days" and the way of living that no longer exists or is changing, we follow an aging genteel mother who misses both her place in society in the new Pakistan and her son, who has decided to live in Australia and marry an Australian girl. The contrast of the progressive Australian is the local servant girl, who meets and befriends one of the men who fight for islam on the Pakistani/Indian border.

For me, the cultural, regional and religious aspects were really interesting and added a lot of color and flavor to the plot- which would have been interesting even if it only had focused on generation and class differences. Abidi is skilled at drawing out the characters and is good at observing, without taking sides.… (mais)

A lovely plot, beautiful imagery, clever but over too fast, I think. I'm not sure if this is because I had a solid two hours to fill and read it without breaks or because it touches on interesting things and then slips past them.

I've become quite used to reading slowly, with lots of breaks that give me time to think about what I'm reading. Perhaps it would have been a meatier dish with that time?

At any rate, I enjoyed how Abidi wrote about families and sibling relationships and intend to get hold of his book, [b:The House of Bilquis].

Don't read this if you want well-rounded female characters, though.… (mais)