W.W. Norton and Company

224 pages, $23.95

Review by Jean-Luc Bouchard

Deadpan delivery is often associated with the sets of stand-up comedians, but in hands of an author whose themes are ultimately trauma and tragedy, deadpan delivery can be as haunting as it can be deceptively neutral. In Akhil Sharma’s second novel, Family Life, the protagonist Ajay recounts his adolescence spent in transition from India to New Jersey with a nearly numb, matter-of-fact nature that occasionally results in readers’ guilty snickers, but more often steers them into cringing sadness. Sharma presents his audience an austere glimpse into the life of the Mishra family, whose seemingly traditional immigrant story is uprooted by a crisis of health and duty when Ajay’s brother Birju is left severely brain damaged after a swimming accident.

The details of Birju’s health and his family’s commitment to his care, which act as a weighty integument for the novel’s second half, are horrific and blunt; there is no attempt to hide the unpleasantness of his stomach tubes and waste-stained baths. The trauma Ajay suffers as a result of a childhood spent caring for his half-dead brother is relayed not through any empathetic stream of emotion, but rather through a collage of his everyday observations and interactions with his parents, which are stark but scathing:

“I used to think that my father had been assigned to us by the government. This was because he appeared to serve no purpose.”

“I had not told anyone at school about Birju. I had been afraid that if I did, they would misunderstand in the same way that the women at the Ramayan Path had misunderstood, and then their confusion would remind me that what happened to Birju did not matter to most of the world.” Continue reading →