زندگی خانوادگی

by Akhil Sharma, سمیه نصراللهی (translator)

زندگي خانوادگي داستان خانواده‌‌اي هندي است که به سوداي پيشرفت و ثروت به آمريکا مهاجرت مي‌کنند. اما آمريکا شرايطي جز اين را برايشان رقم مي‌زند. خانواده‌اي که رد فرهنگ، زبان، آداب و رفتار هندي هم‌چنان در جسم و جانشان است. زندگي اين خانواده را پسر کوچک خانواده از کودکي روايت مي‌کند. روايتي شيرين و جذاب از مهاجرت، عشق، اندوه، خستگي و اميد. اين رمان در سال 2014 يکي از ده رمان برتر سال به انتخاب نيويورک تايمز شد.

Genres: Fiction, India, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels, Family, Historical Fiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2014

About the author

Akhil Sharma was born in Delhi in India and emigrated to the USA in 1979. His stories have been published in the New Yorker and in Atlantic Monthly, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Collections. His first novel, An Obedient Father, won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young American Novelists' in 2007. His second novel, Family Life, won The 2015 Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. Sharma is currently a Fellow at The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sparse in style, yet deeply textured tale of an Indian family emigrating to what they believe is a land of opportunity and wonderment, the United States in the 1970s detailing their extreme trials, great joys and tribulations. At times very sad, other times darkly comedic and overall all about family, certainly a good read! A 7 out of 12, Three Star read

2015 read

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad to see this made the New York Times Top 10 of 2014. Thanks to Goodreads and W.W. Norton for advance copy.

Akhil Sharma's "Family Life" is a beautifully controlled autobiographical novel. I couldn’t shake the feeling from the very beginning that something magnificent was going to happen. Granted, a tweet by the publisher stating, “The end is going to make your jaw drop”, was partially responsible for this.

Though it’s the true story of a family that immigrated from India to the United States, I won’t say this is an “immigrant novel.” Not only does this novel transcend the moniker, but Sharma actually decries the label in an interview with the novelist, Mohsin Hamid, in the back of the book, “People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.”

Akhil Sharma’s “Family Life” transcends the experience of immigration. This is a story of the universal tragedy and triumph of the human experience. And he does this all as if possessed by the ghost of Hemingway, with a swaying rhythm and simple, yet carefully detailed prose.

Through ambition and hard work, the family leaves India and moves to the United States when the author is a young child. At first, the family finds relatively good luck and fortune, but they are soon met with a permanent and irreparable tragedy. As any family, the fire of tragedy brings out the impurities of character and morality. Each family member is forced to face their own demons and fight them alone.

I was mesmerized by the liftoff of this book. You’re bucking along, tragedy strikes, you settle in for the heartbreak, and then Sharma stops you. It’s at this point he almost says, “You thought that was real? No. This is real.” And for the rest of the book, you’re invited into his mind and soul. I will not give it away and tell you when this occurs because I think it could be at a different place for each reader.

I’ll be real for a moment, I never cry, it’s very rare, but I will admit that I unsuccessfully tried to force a few tears back into their duct. And believe it or not, it was not at the moment of tragedy, it was at the moment of the narrator's discovery of Hemingway. This is a work of art, and being one of the first to read this and experience this as such, brought me to tears. (I also laughed a few times.)

Highly, highly recommended.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak, bitter, harsh, unsparing, a precise delineation of a private hell. You want to know what life is like for a recently immigrated to America family of Indians when the older teenage brother has a catastrophic accident? Look no further. This is strictly all from the compressed, repressed, suppressed, raging on the inside, passing exams on the outside point of view of Ajay, who in 200 whizzing-by pages grows from around 8 to college and beyond while this daily awfulness never lets up. Apparently semi-autobiographical, but I don’t even want to think about that. I’m not sure I’m selling this – actually I’m not even sure I want to. But I thought it was great. I like books that tell me things I didn't know I wanted to know.

[K · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received this book through the Goodreads Giveaway. Upon receiving the book I became very excited to read it after seeing the glowing review blurbs on the back of the book. But, after completing the book, I ended up really disappointed. I can't say I agree with any of the glowing endorsements. I found this book extremely boring. The book is very short, generally it would take me about 2-3 days to read a book of this length, but it took me over a week. I just had no desire to keep reading. The writing was pedestrian, the family was uninteresting and showed no growth over the course of the book, and Ajay, the protagonist, is not an endearing or sympathetic character in any way. He even calls himself arrogant and annoying. Upon reading that line I thought, yep, that's EXACTLY what you are. By the end of the book I just really didn't see any point in telling this story. Was I supposed to relate to this family, learn something, be empathetic towards them? I felt none of those things. I definitely wouldn't recommend reading this book to anyone I know.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere in the middle of Akhil Sharma’s novel, Family Life, the narrator, Ajay Mishra, whose childhood is what the novel is about, starts a literary journey. He reads a biography of Ernest Hemingway before reading any fiction works by the American writer. In ninth grade at that point, he fantasizes about becoming a writer and goes on to read critical essays on Hemingway. An essay tells him that “…Hemingway got away with writing plainly because he wrote about exotic things.” Thereafter, Ajay reads Hemingway’s novels and stories, developing his own understanding. After some months, he decides to write a story himself. His mind is clear: “…I knew that I should just push all the exotic things to the side as if they didn’t matter, that this was how one used exoticism—by not bothering to explain.”

In Family Life, an Indian family of four—a married couple and their two sons, Ajay and Birju—migrate to America. Months after settling in, Birju, the elder son, has a swimming pool accident and suffers brain damage. Ajay is ten years old then. The parents dedicate themselves to caring for Birju, and Ajay, the child, is thus destined to grow up with a half-dead brother, a mother who nearly abandons him emotionally, and a father who takes to alcoholism.

Great exotification was possible here. Family Life could have labored on how peculiar this family’s coping mechanisms were due to the fact that they were Indians, Indians in America. It could have fallen into the trap of explaining these peculiarities as derivatives of the immigration experience, or worse, tried to make a comment about exile. It could have been an immigration-novel-with-great-tragedy-at-its-heart. Its greatest strength, instead, is that while it uses these notions—saffron-clad miracle workers do step in, there is racism in school—it never is explicitly about them. This result is achieved through the same cunning that Ajay discovers in Hemingway. Sharma does describe the exotic and the peculiar, but he does so in the simplest language, always seeming to be brushing it aside, never explaining ‘Indianness’ or using it to explain anything. On rare occasions, this assumption of a priori knowledge has a strange effect. Ajay once calls the paralyzed Birju “Brother-Life,” just to sound ridiculous to himself. The joke is lost on readers who cannot sense the original phrase in Hindi “Bhai-jaan.” For the English-only reader, Sharma is happy to use the intrigue of a strange appellation and isn’t bothered to explain further.

Only once is Hindi used. When visited by people, Ajay’s mother says of her husband: “Unhe baut thakan hai.” Sharma explains: “The phrase did not say that he was feeling tired but that he possesses tiredness, and with its indirection highlighted that something was being avoided and so asked the listener not to inquire any further.” The impact is telling.

[Chris Witkowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since the author has stated that everything that occurs in this slim novel actually happened to him, I am mystified as to why he did not call it a memoir. In answer to this question Sharma states: “For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.” But since I usually expect plot and character development when reading fiction, I was very disappointed with this true to life "novel".

The story recounts the author's/protagonist's (Ajay) life, telling how he and his family emigrated from India to the US in the late 1970s, describing the immense difficulties they had trying to assimilate into American culture, the roadblocks their parents faced every day. Just when it appears as though progress is being made in their attempts to blend in, Birju, Ajay's older brother, dives into a swimming pool, hits his head on the bottom, lays under water for three minutes, and the lives of the family of four are changed forever. Their difficulties and struggles are made all the harder, at least in Ajay's eyes, by the fact they are not white, an attribute that the young boy feels would pave the way for them to succeed in all their efforts - to take care of his invalid brother, to help his father beat his alcoholism, to ease his mother's burdens.

There are a few uplifting moments in the novel, mainly when Ajay describes the joy and release he found in reading. And the part where he decides to read every book in the library about Ernest Hemingway before actually reading Hemingway's works, in order to learn how to write, made me laugh. By the time he got around to actually reading the author's novels, he knew how they all ended!

But overall, if one is looking for inspiration and enlightenment, this book is not for you. It is a grim, sad story that left me feeling very empty.

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a deeply moving story with a lot of sadness and loneliness, but it is also a story about unconditional love . The story is narrated by Ajay , who at 8 years old in the late 1970's, emigrates from India to the United States with his mother, father, and his older brother, Birju. They are a family seeking a better life, but when Birju has an accident and is mentally and physically incapacitated, “ the family life” becomes a daily struggle for all of them , as they try to care for Birju.

Your heart will be broken for Birju and the loss of what could have been for him. Your heart will continue to be broken when you see through Ajay’s eyes what this does to the family over the years. Ajay is lonely and sometimes bullied, but Sharma manages to infuse some humor, when we see 9 year old Ajay praying to God, who for him has the face of Clark Kent to help him pass his math test. You can’t help but laugh (and cry) at Ajay’s attempt to find a girlfriend by passing notes saying “I love you” and whispering in a girl’s ear the same as he passes her in the hall.

You feel the mother’s sorrow and the father’s pain, and Ajay’s guilt and sadness as they go through life. While the book also depicts the immigrant experience, it was mostly for me, a coming of age story in the face of family adversity, the love of a family and how much they will do for each other. It is for me about the resilience of a young boy who becomes a man at a far too young age.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, where “Family Life” shines is in the remarkably simplistic prose providing devastatingly emotional details. This is a story of an Indian immigrant family who comes to America in the 1970’s. Told from, at that point 10 year old Ajay’s point of view, we get an innocent glimpse into what it’s like to try and meld into a new society. Sharma wisely writes Ajay with a sense of humor, which helps balance the trauma of the story. As Ajay begins to understand the new culture, he watches the responses of his native Indians to different situations. We learn of his parent’s marriage through his eyes.

To add to the basic immigrant story, Sharma adds a twist with a life altering accident that leaves his older, and smarter brother severely brain-damaged. Now we have a story that involves not only the unimaginable family tragedy, but also two different culture’s response to such a tragedy. We see how grief compounds the difficulty in assimilation.

Ajay provides the reader with his journey through the shambles of his family life as he tries to navigate himself through school. Both of his parents handle the tragedy differently; both parents change in their ways of parenting. Both parents become different people from who Ajay immigrated with.

This is a story of devotion. It’s a story of immigrants. It’s a coming of age story.

[Ming · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this advanced reader's copy from GR's Giveaways Program.

For a good part of this book, I thought it was a Young Adult book because the narrator is a child. The tone is quite plainspoken, simple. This contrasts with and magnifies the profoundly devastating pain and confusion the boy experiences.

The tone, though, doesn't change as the narrator matures, for instance into high school. The tone remains simple and here I believe its continuation reflects the deep melancholy of his life on several levels. There's a hopelessness that pervades and is ceaseless, and as reader I wanted something to counter that, some resolution, an insight to lead to a change. This did not occur, not after several hurdles were jumped and challenges endured.

The gloom that begins the book cannot be shaken or disrupted.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about an immigrant experience crushed by the results of a medical tragedy. The ambitious expectations of East Indian parents for their son’s future academic success suddenly disappeared when their son is permanently brain damaged by a swimming pool accident.

The story is told in first person by a younger son as the family slowly drifts into a form of dysfunction totally focused on the mother’s nonstop care of their helpless older son and the father's battle with alcoholism. Meanwhile, the younger son seems to be forgotten.

This book reads like a memoir, but the author says it is a semi-autobiographical novel. I interpret that to mean that the emotion and memories underlying the story are true, but that narrative details may have been changed to communicate more fully the feelings involved in living through the experiences described.

Much of this story was so painful I could hardly tolerate it. Through much of the book I felt uncomfortable learning about embarrassing secrets of this particular family and some of the ways of the Indian immigrant community that seem strange to an outsider. Should I as an Anglo-outsider be allowed to know these things? Perhaps I'm being too sensitive.

The following quotation from the book describes the self-consciousness of the Indian students in high school.

We were all a little shy about the lives we lived at home. At home we didn’t eat the food that white kids ate. At home our mothers and sometimes our fathers dressed in odd clothes. Out holidays were not the same as white people’s. Our parents worshiped gods who rode on mice. To attack someone based on his or her family brought up so much of our own shame that we didn’t have the heart to be mean.

The reader can take hope from the fact that the resilience of the younger son enables him to survive and in the end thrive. The narrative is told in a droll ironic sad-sack (a la David Sedaris) style that some people call humorous. But I found it sad (except for the very end).

The following short review is from the PageADay Calendar for November 3, 2016:
Called a “supreme storyteller” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, novelist Akhil Sharma commands an outstanding and compelling narrative voice. The year is 1978, and the Mishra family is living in Delhi. Eventually the two boys, Ajay and Birju, are able to emigrate with their mother to America, where their father awaits them. But tragedy strikes soon after they arrive in the New World, and Ajay's brother is left incapacitated. With humor and sophistication, this incredibly gifted author unflinchingly reveals the Indian immigrant's experience in America.
FAMILY LIFE: A NOVEL, by Akhil Sharma (W. W. Norton, 2014)

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read a couple of memoirs about caring for a family member with a severe brain injury: The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink and Beyond the High Blue Air by Lu Spinney. Compared to those, the tone of this autobiographical novel is so distant, so dispassionate that I had trouble feeling much sympathy for the immigrant family at its heart, despite the awfulness of their lives after Birju hits his head in a swimming pool and lies underwater for three long, brain-killing minutes. As they give up on interventions medical and supernatural, the father turns to drink, the mother is coping on the surface but quietly destroyed inside, and younger brother Ajay – the narrator, a child for most of the book – turns his emotions off and emulates Hemingway to write his family’s story as simply as possible. But lines like these are only going through the motions; they didn’t make me feel anything: “It seemed unfair that something like this could happen and the world go on” and “‘Daddy, I am so sad.’ / ‘You’re sad?’ my father said angrily. ‘I want to hang myself every day.’”

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ajay is eight years old, he is in India with his mother and older brother, waiting for his father, who had gone to America a year before, to send them tickets to join him. The tickets arrive and they leave, becoming immigrants in a land very unfamiliar to them.

At first things are strange and this semi autobiographical novel does a great job describing everything Ajay sees and does. When automatic doors open, he feels very important, elevators are a source of wonder, but there are adjustments as well. Than misfortune strikes the family, and things will never be the same again.

Told is simple prose, our narrator Ajay, must deal with complex problems. With humor and compassion the author leads us through the land mine that becomes Ajay's and his family's new lives. Ajay must find a way to thrive in this new life and mostly he must do it alone.

Ajay is a wonder, I quite fell in love with him. The way he sees, the way he acts are all so realistic. One cannot help pulling for him, wanting things to turn out well for him. Also real are the stresses on the family, the falling apart before the putting back together. Sharma has done a wonderful job with this novel.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I felt sad, happy, content.”

This semi-autobiographical book by Akhil Sharma won several awards and hence my curiosity got piqued. The book is well written slice of life story of a family dealing with a tragedy.

Ajay and his brother Briju move to US with their parents from a very middle class Indian society of 1970s. When a tragic accident makes Birju brain damaged how the family copes with it becomes the rest of the book.

It is not a story that heads somewhere. Character arcs of his mom, his dad and Ajay are natural and probably different reactions to the tragedy. The other characters don't feature must though they get several mentions - like Mr.Narayan, Ajay's girlfriend(s) and Mrs.Sethi.

The writing journey of the author was somehow out of the blue. The book felt a bit suffocating. But credit to the author for keeping it real.

A piece of good writing.

[Sukanto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet again, one of those books which you read from start to finish in almost one breath. And which leave you breathless. Not a very long book, yet such tremendous detailing and superb plot outline! With narration that leaves you speechless. Pardon the use of so many cliches but this one book that truly deserves it. Akhil Sharma talks about things that a lot of emigrant Indians go through. And this may have been talked about by other authors as well. But the passionate telling of the story makes one keep the faith in contemporary writers. It's the things that we miss yet can matter so much, that makes Sharma's writing simply stand above the rest. One of my best reads for this year indeed.

[Sorayya Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simple and brutal story of a family's tragedy. Survival and salvation are not always the same thing, but in this narrative, survival feels like salvation. The simplicity of the narrative is profound, a lyricism to match the exactness of the horror. Love does all sorts of things to people, but in Akhil Sharma's book it is sublime and horror all at once. The novel is masterful.

[Iris P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family Life

4.5 starts

I loved this book. It felt honest and profound. For such a short read it was very intense and powerful. I have taken a few days to write this review, to let some feeling and thoughts settled down first.
This novel is elegant and beautiful. It’s also dark and tragic, but it also has its share of light and funny moments.
Indian-American author Akhil Sharma has been described as a “supreme storyteller” and after reading this novel I can see why. This is a story about immigrants, tragedy, religion and traditions, race, and ultimately about the pursuit of happiness gone wrong. There’s not strong plot on this book, it mostly narrates events as they happen.

Family Life begins in the present moment and then flashes back .The novel is written in 1st person narrative, Ajay, who is the younger of two brothers, is the narrator.

One of my pet peeves when reading books narrated by children characters is to find that the dialogue doesn’t feel real. I hate when a 10-year old that sounds more like he or she is 25!!
To this point, I found that at moments Ajay in fact, had a voice that sounded a little bit too mature for his years. The author explained that by using flashbacks as a device, he tried to circumvent this problem.

This is how he explained it in an interview:
“The logic of it was that I wanted to figure out a way to allow the language of the eight-year old, the nine-year old be a little more sophisticated. And so by making clear that this was retrospective, it allowed some of that complexity to come through to the younger Ajay”

At the beginning of the book (I listened to the audiobook version) and I got a little confused and thought that perhaps I was reading a memoir and not a work of fiction. Later on a fellow GR reader sent me an article that mentions that Mr. Sharma indeed wrote this book as a semi-autobiographical account of his own family experience coming to America.

The novel follows The Mishras, an Indian family that emigrated to America in the late 1970’s.
When we first meet the family, they are still in Delhi, waiting for their planes tickets to arrive so they can start their new lives in America.
When they arrived in New Jersey, their father is waiting for them. At the beginning, both 8 year-old Ajay, and his older brother Birju, are amazed at what they find in their new country: elevators, doors that open automatically, they even find carpets thrilling. America is all they had expected and more.

Young Ajay points out, “In India during winter, my mother used to get up early to heat pots of water on the stove so we could bathe … During the coming days, the wealth of America kept astonishing me. The television had programming from morning till night. In our shiny brass mailbox in the lobby, we received ads on colored paper. The sliding glass doors of our apartment building would open when we approached."

A few years into their lives in their new country, and while the family is looking at houses with the idea of buying one; young Ajay has a “sudden realization that probably we will never go back to India, that probably we will live in America forever”. I think most immigrants at one point of another experience a similar situation and decision. This brings with it the understanding that the person you left behind is in the past, and you will probably become a very different “you” in this new land. Such a realization could be particularly disturbing for kids, which for the most part have not control over their lives and where their parents choose to live.

Our narrator Ajay is smart, and inquisitive. He can also be, stubborn and even mean sometimes. But it is in Birju, the older of the two brothers, where the family has put their immediate expectations for a brighter future. When Birju is accepted into a prestigious high school, everything seems to be going well as this confirms their hopes that Birju is destined to do great things.
What happens instead is that tragedy strikes when Birju hits his head diving into a pool. He is severely brain-damaged and his future is changed forever all within the span of 3 minutes. He’ll never recover and fulfil his dreams. He’ll never talk, walk or recognize anybody.

At first 10-year old Ajay doesn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation and he casually muses, that if Birju were dead, “I would get to be the only son.”

After this horrible incident occurs, the dynamic of the family is shaken to its core. Ajay finds himself extremely lonely as his parents, and especially his mother, is consumed with the idea that her son will somehow recovered. Besides Ajay, Mrs. Mishra is most important character in this novel. She is a resilient, strong woman, we can sense her profound grief, and how she chooses to deal with it. She insists that Birju is in a “coma”, because she’s not ready to accept the reality that her son is brain-dead.
She invites numerous “miracle workers” with the hope that one of them will perform a miracle and bring her lost son back. It’s heartbreaking to see her get lost and her identity in the process.

Times passes and life for the Mishras revolves around taking care of Birju and attending and providing for his medical needs. The parents fight a lot. The father becomes an alcoholic.
One Christmas Day, Ajay bursts into tears, and tells his parents that he too deserves something, for enduring so much sadness, at least some pizza. “I am so sad,” Ajay tells his father one evening. “You’re sad?” his father responds; “I want to hang myself every day”.

Ajay has conversations with God; he feels guilty for being the one person of the family that still seems to have luck on his side. I found these ruminations he has with God, charming, funny and authentic. He tries cajoling God into making deals to improve things for both his brother and himself.

Ajay also discovers literature, this serves as a saving grace for him in the middle of such much despair. I found the passages where he studies Hemingway’s style of writing truly wonderful and poignant.

This novel shows how unsettling experiencing a tragedy such as this can be to any family, and how it can make any family deeply dysfunctional. But there are also beautiful moments, especially between Ajay and his mom, in which they put aside hostility and hurt and come together to take care of Birju and each other.
I found admirable to see how the Mishras enjoyed the moral support of many other Indian families. Their immigrant community plays an important role in helping them throughout the years. Not everybody has their best interest at heart though, some friends are loyal and honorable while others abandon them in their time of need and yet others try to take advantage and exploit their situation.
And of course, Ajay grows up; falls in love, applies for college, makes plans for his future. When he eventually leaves his home, he gets a chance to at least try to have a normal life.

Ajay and his family continue to assimilate more and more into the American way of life. He becomes an investment banker and accomplishes financial success. But towards the end of the novel we see how very broken he is. At the end the question is, was the prize for his success too high?
We have a strong feeling that something didn't go the way it was supposed to.

Family Life ends when Ajay, in the present, comes to a strong, very sudden realization. As to whether or not I found the ending of the novel satisfying, I believe the author put it best when he said ““to me, the book still feels undone”.
Whether or not you are an immigrant (like me) or not, I think that many will relate with this story and the difficulties of adjusting to a new life, a new place, a new language, a new beginning. In that sense, this is a pretty universal story.

The Narrator of the audiobook Vikas Adam did a great job at bringing this novel to life for me. He was particularly skillful at switching between Indian and American accents, both for female & male characters, which can be quite tricky.

[sAmAnE · Rating 3 out of 5]

.
این کتاب رو برخلاف نقدهایی که خونده بودم مبنی بر اینکه طولانی و خسته‌کننده و تکراری هست،دوست داشتم.کتاب ۱۷۰ صفحه داشت ولی خوندنش و حس صمیمیت نویسنده رو کاملا می‌شد درک کرد.کتاب در مورد تجربه‌ی شخصی آخیل شارما هست که با خانواده‌اش از هند به آمریکا مهاجرت می‌کنند و برخلاف تصوراتشون با مشکلاتی مواجه میشن.تعهدش به خانواده و پشتکارش برای رسیدن به موفقیت عالی بود.
#زندگی_خانوادگی
#آخیل_شارما
#ترجمه#سمیه_نصرالهی

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So wrote Leo Tolstoy over a century ago. Akhil Sharma’s canvas is a distinctly unhappy family, and we’re alerted to it from the very first line: “My father has a glum nature. He’s been retired for a few years and he doesn’t speak much.”

There’s a reason for his father’s glumness. As Indian immigrants, Ajay (the young narrator’s) parents had high hopes for their life in America, mainly centering around Ajay’s older brother Birju – a brilliant young scholar. Early on in the novel, Birju dives into a swimming pool, striking his head, leaving him forever brain damaged. It is now up to Ajay to navigate the treacherous waters ahead: deal with his own guilt and resentment and at the same time, strive to remain happy and make his parents proud.

Akhil Sharma does not go for bells and whistles. The narrative is written in a spare and somewhat flattened tone, echoing the sense of loss and futility that pervades the closed-down Mishra family life. The price exacted by this personal tragedy – the isolation and alienation, the deceptions, the drinking and loss of identity – are balanced against a somewhat empty striving for the American dream.

I was alerted to the fact that Family Life could be autobiographical by Ajay’s budding sense of himself as an observer and recorder of his life, reimagined into fiction. (Ajay is particularly enamored of Hemingway and indeed, Mr. Sharma’s style here is not unlike Hemingway’s in its distancing of emotion). Sure enough, after Googling the author, Family Lie is indeed based on his own experiences. In an article, Mr. Sharma states, “The story I was planning to tell had very little plot. A truly traumatic thing occurs to the family and then the family begins to unravel. This misery of this family’s daily life takes a slow toll.”

To the book’s credit, it comes across as very authentic and believable without any of the manipulation one might expect from a topic of this sort. It is universal in examining a family’s response to loss and distinctive in its spotlight on the Indian community in general, and the Mishra family in particular. It is a genuine look at those who are forced to embark into unchartered territory and how, as an immigrant nation, we become removed not only from our roots but also from our own best selves.

[Sayantan Ghosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

All Unhappy Families are Not Alike

If a book can fill you with tenderness after you’ve laughed and cried with it for 200-odd pages, then it’s a book worth remembering, revisiting. Akhil Sharma's Family Life is one of them.

In Sharma’s semi-autobiographical Family Life, Ajay Mishra’s brother Birju has a near-fatal accident that causes severe brain damage, after their middle-class Indian family moves to the United States. He can no longer walk, talk or even roll over in his sleep. That one incident shatters their family’s centre and his parents cannot find the strength in them to protect themselves from the arrival of this torrential grief.

Throwaway sentences that seamlessly describe the American dream as dreamt by a young mind that’s yet to fully comprehend the vastness of this shared fantasy are peppered throughout the narrative. There’s an unmistakable ease with which the writing shifts from moving images of lives in dislocation to unsentimental portraits of people immersed in a state of permanent sadness, to often also darkly humorous terrains.

As Ajay’s parents fight and argue over the years – his mother dedicates every ounce of her energy in “waking” the maimed Birju and his father turns into an alcoholic mess – they don’t realise how in all this they forget to nurture Ajay as the young boy moves from adolescence to teenage. But the novel never lets the readers forget it. When he’s fifteen, Ajay breaks down in one scene and demands pizza, to remind his parents that he too deserves something from them.

Akhil Sharma had said in an interview that he can be more truthful in a novel than he can be in a memoir. Isn’t that true for most of us? Don’t we all at times find it easier to share something intimate with a stranger than with someone in our family or a friend?

One of the most well-known questions in philosophical thought experiments asks: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” I don’t know the answer to it, but I can assure you that every time a heart breaks in this novel, it does.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quietly disheartening book about a family implosion.

In 1978, eight-year-old Ajay Mishra lives in Delhi with his older brother, Birju, and his mother and father. His father immigrates to America and a year later, he sends airline tickets and the rest of the family follow him. Ajay struggles to assimilate while Birju has an easier time fitting in. Birju has just been accepted, to the family’s delight, to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, when tragedy strikes. How Ajay and his family react and cope with the tragedy while struggling with the American immigration experience is the crux of the book.

The story is narrated by Ajay, from eight to forty. He is always the outsider – there is a pervasive sense of isolation and loneliness emanating from him, as well as guilt and anger. The tragedy has shaped his life in ways he doesn’t fully understand until the last sentence of the book.

I understand this book is largely autobiographical (although this is not a memoir, it is presented as fiction) and that it took the author thirteen years to write. It’s very compact and spare in its execution, with lovely writing. And yet….something is missing. It has a “cool heart.” As I read, I felt as though I were observing and listening from a distance – but that is probably the author’s intent. Ajay narrates in a very matter-of-fact and unsentimental manner. It is not a showy, emotional rendering of a family’s struggles, it is much more circumscribed than that. Hard to explain.

A 3.5 for me.

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Family Life” is a coming of age story, an immigrant story, a story that proves once again how every family is unhappy in its own way. Closely based on Sharma’s own life, it’s as near to memoir as fiction gets.

Yet despite the many categories into which it can be slotted, this tender, tragic, darkly humorous novel stands apart. From the opening line, “My father has a glum nature”, it’s a masterpiece of understatement and whatever the opposite of sentimentality is.

It's impossible to say much about the book without giving away its central event. This is a story in which only one thing happens, yet it compels from first page to last. All that Sharma chose to leave out is there between the lines. Young Ajay’s earnest, deadpan, oddball voice—the voice of a child forced to grow up far too soon—questions without laying blame. Writing a story about hope and sadness this desperate is an act of heroism in itself. To do it with this kind of love, honesty and humility is art of the highest order.

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

One brother is catatonic, the other is mundane
The plot is both

Fine to have the voice of a young teenage narrator, but the voice doesn't change as the narrator gets older. And I deliberately didn't use the word "matures" because he doesn't seem to mature at all.

I am still not sure why this was a recommended read ... he must have credentials or connections. There was no plot. There was an enormous amount of trivial repetition.

Boring as! Get. Over. Yourself.

[Chris Blocker · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some wonderful moments in Akhil Sharma's Family Life, largely in how the protagonist, Ajay, sees the world. He often has a view that is juvenile, yet insightful. These glimpses of Ajay's perspective give this novel its strength, but it hinges far too much on these occasions. The story and characters all seem to revolve around these moments in Ajay's life, and while that may be the point, it does not lend to the most enjoyable read. The novel lacked a singularity that could keep me interested. The person meant to unify the novel is unable to be much of a character, due to circumstances. Family Life is full of good glimpses, the potential for excellent short stories, but as a novel—which was the intention here—it did not gel.

There is an interview with the author in the Advance Reader's copy I read. I hope this will be included with the final product, because I do feel it gives some insight into the writer and his possible rationale in regards to crafting this novel. This is a very personal story; in fact, it very closely mirrors the author's own. I understand the author's desire to write a novel and not a memoir, but for whatever reason it seemed to me the author was distanced from the subject. He was close to Ajay—very close—but everything else seemed irrelevant to the story. Sharma could replace these characters and circumstances with others and I don't think I would notice a difference.

If you like stories about Indians or families, you may like this novel. I think the author's talented, but personally I couldn't connect with this one. The narrator was memorable, however, and that may be enough to lead me back to this author again.

[Abhinav · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a 3.5 plus than an outright 4 out of 5.

"Family Life" falls in the category of 'illness dramas' (doesn’t sound nice, I know) like Jerry Pinto's spectacular debut novel "Em and The Big Hoom" but the latter is a far more superlative work in that regard. Nonetheless, the major appeal of this book lies in its portrayal of a dysfunctional family that you might resonate with even if you believe you've never been part of one.

Autobiographical in nature, Akhil Sharma invested twelve-and-a-half years of his life writing "Family Life" & even though it does not make for easy reading all the time, this one's recommended for those looking to read something that appears to be full of sadness yet is full of life.

[Manjul Bajaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I liked this book much. It is straightforward, direct and honest and I found it an easy read. I liked how the author has pared the writing down till it is clear of all excess sentimentality and self-pity. It must have taken a lot of doing to reach this level of detachment and objectivity. That I guess explains the first question that puzzled me about it - why such a slight book should have taken twelve years to write. The other thing that puzzled me was the tremendous hype the book has received. It is a very good book but there have been others in the same broad genre (fictionalized memoirs of a boyhood afflicted by a close family member’s illness) that I have found more compelling. For instance, Amandeep Sandhu’s Sepia Leaves had an unforgettable searing quality to it and Jerry Pinto’s Em and The Big Hoom was more nuanced and had better developed, more engaging characters. But, like they say, comparisons are odious.

[Ankit · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I ever do a chapter by chapter analysis of this book, with the chapter on the x-axis and the ratings on the y-axis, it would closely resemble a sine curve.

The book is sad. The plot has nothing happy to cheer about, it's a book about family struggles around an event which is depressing. The family's struggle is even more depressing. The characters are depressing. The place is sad. And yet, Akhil Sharma has managed to give us a good book around various elements of melancholy.

The good moments of this book is when the principal protagonist discovers the wonderful world of literature and writing, when the dad takes to self help after being obsessed with drinking and the mother giving all her strength to keep her family bonds tight. It's these moments which makes you laugh and cry with the characters. Something which Akhil Sharma manages it without going over the top. The ingredients of drama is necessary but nothing is over cooked.

To sum it up, I felt sad, happy, content.

[Tushar Rishi · Rating 4 out of 5]

heartbreakingly real, written with amazing precision. though the ending felt a bit rushed.
also contains one of the funniest sentences I've read this year: "I used to think that my father had been assigned to us by the government."

[Connie Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a short book and a quick read, which was hard for me to believe as it took the author twelve years to write it. In reading about it I found that this fictional story is based very closely on events in his own life. Two young boys immigrate to the US from Dehli with there parents. When tragedy occurs it changes each and every member of this family and mostly not for the better.

"Family Life" is told from the point of view of AJay who is only 8 at the beginning of this story. It is his older brother Birju who is the "special one", the star of the family....even in his little brothers eyes. When a tragic accident occurs the balance of Ajay's life shifts and he struggles so to find his way as he watches his family collapse.

I appreciated that Sharma keeps the narration void of a lot of detail since Ajay's so young he see's and expresses things as a young child would perceive all that is going on around him. The writing is true to the narrator's point of view. I did however find the story a bit flat at times, maybe for the same reason.....a lack of emotion or detail that a young boy would not have.

This is a sad story, heartbreaking really but Ajay's perception and beliefs keep it from being too maudlin. I especially enjoyed his conversations with "God" whom he pictures much like Superman. Ajay does grow up in this book and the perceptions grow as well. I felt his struggles trying to find his own place, trying to have a childhood in strange surroundings. As an adult toward the end of the book I was not convinced he had found his place yet.

I thought the writing was very good. I also loved reading of the Indian customs and cultures.....it is a whole different world with so many levels to peel away to even begin to understand. I would think that this may have been a very cathartic book for the author to write...as well as a very emotional one. As good as the writing was, I felt too much of the memoir and not enough bonding with the characters. 3.5 stars

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family Life by Akhil Sharma is in part the story of the Indian immigrant in the United States. But mostly it is the story of a family, struck by tragedy and coming apart because of its ceaseless weight.

Ajay and his older brother Birju come to the United States from India when Ajay is 8 years old. Birju adjusts more quickly-he makes friends more easily, gets excellent grades, and is perhaps the more beloved by their parents. Then, shortly after realizing his family's dreams of being accepted to the Bronx High School of Science, Birju dives into a pool striking his head and deprived of oxygen for three minutes (these three minutes become an obsession for Ajay). He is brain-damaged, unable to talk, apparently unaware of anything. The family remains devoted to him, giving up their lives to take care of him. Ajay's father becomes an alcoholic and Ajay's mother become increasingly angry with the world, as well as dissatisfied with Ajay. Ajay attempts to become not only himself but also everything his brother would have been. He cannot come to terms with what has happened to his brother-or to his family.

I was deeply touched by this book and wish it had been longer, although it is beautifully complete as it is. I felt some hope for Ajay at the end, but I don't know if this was wishful thinking on my part. Maybe Sharma left the door just enough open to keep the reader from the despair his characters know so well.

[Miriam Cihodariu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard story to read and the fact that it's almost auto-biographical makes it all the more difficult to take in. It's about a family tragedy and the obligations and damage that you can't move away from, even if it means eternal unhappiness and drudgery.

Once the older brother has an accident that leaves him severely brain-damaged, the family permanently delves into psychosis and estrangement. The mother is incapable of caring about anything else, the dad is struggling with alcoholism, the remaining son just wants to be noticed and the community oscillates between rejecting them and deifying the mom and the sick son (because of their tale of devotion and so on).

But beyond the personal tragedy, it's also a story about the immigrant experience, which is both particular (to the Indian-American immigrant culture), but universal at the same time.