Family Life
By Akhil Sharma
224 pages;
W. W. Norton & Company
In 1978, 8-year-old
Ajay, his brother, Birju, and their mother are preparing to leave New Delhi for
New York City, where their father/husband has already found work as an
accountant. The three are from a far less developed, much poorer India than
that of today. At the time, "not every family hired a band to play outside
their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country," writes
Sharma, "Still many families did," anticipating the glorious Western
riches to come. For the first few months in the U.S., it seems as if the family's golden emigration dreams have come true. The
boys thrill at the wild joys of fresh, hot water from a tap and have the "sense
of being in a fairy tale...with a jug that is always full of milk or bag that
never empties of food." Then an
accident—in the most American of places, a summery, suburban
pool—undoes everything. Sharma writes so lucidly and truly about
loss, all from a child's perspective, that
reading this novel may just make you feel like a young, bewildered stranger in
your own land. Expect to empathize until it hurts—only to ultimately
ask yourself, as Ajay's mother does,
"Is your happiness not my happiness?"
— Leigh Newman