Reviews

Baby’s Breath by Shahnaz Zaidi: A Powerful Novel on Autism Spectrum and Much More

Autism is as perilous as any other visible disorder in the world. This is considered more serious as it affects the entire life cycle of a child. Have you come across any autistic child? Did you ever notice why they behave in a different way and how tough it is to take care of them? Be it any level of autism, the caregivers needs to be soft and tender towards their subject.

Recently, I came across a novel called Baby’s Breath. It was based on ASD – autism spectrum disorder. It chronicles the life cycle of Pari Khan, who was slightly autistic. The novel is about her journey from one simple Indian village to London as a famous artist and much more.

Let’s see in the review what is there special about this book.

Baby’s Breath by Shahnaz Zaidi is a beautiful novel on an autistic child’s journey from childhood to choosing career and life partner. I loved the multi-culture of the novel and it was full of sub stories in its settings. I have met and seen autistic children. It takes a great amount of hard work and patience to shape up their lives even for arranging basic things or chores like schooling, homework, play and so on.

The story begins at Hasanpur. In one of the grandest Haveli lives a Muslim family, headed by Bibi Saheb and cared by one old lady called Bua. They get a baby on their door one day. They accept her as their child. Bibi Saheb acts her mother. The family at Haveli is long but fragmented; many members live in the UK. So, it is a novel of diversity as well.

The girl Pari Khan suffers from ASD – a sort of autism. The entire family from India and the UK nurture her. They send her for schooling, then boarding education, and then in the UK for higher studies. Ultimately the girl picks up her field and life partner. So, the story is how she lives in an adopted family, how culture and other things affect her life.

The novel basically deals with caring of less privileged children. Pari Khan’s life is inspiring and it can ignite the hope in millions of parents that are grappling with autistic children in their lives. I sign in appreciation for the story building and sub stories of culture and different land from time and again. All the characters are mature and well-sketched, they play their roles perfectly and nudge the novel in a measured pace. This novel can be recommended to millions of people for hope building. From this novel, we learnt that life is tender it needs to be taken care properly.

Our View on the Cover Page:

The cover page is simple and meaningful. Baby’s Breath is a soft flower. It needs to be reared properly with a lot of care and softness and politeness. It exudes love, care, purity, and innocence. Thus, the title is apt, as the lead character Pari Khan too needed a lot of attention and care and love.

Our View on the Writing Style:

The narration is captivating and language is lucid. The author made a point not to put repeated stuff to drive the story. All is good, if one point that I want to suggest is that the story could be a bit shorter, otherwise a good-to-go story from all perspectives. In fact, the author took time to sketch characters brilliantly. Some are serious ones, a few ones are emotional, and others perfectly tied up to their roles and responsibilities.

TitleBaby’s Breath
ISBN978-1638066552
Edition Reviewed2021
AuthorShahnaz Zaidi
The Asian Review Rating8 out of 10

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s