It has been 14 years since Akhil Sharma published his first, widely acclaimed novel, An Obedient Father. Though its subject matter is very different, Family Life more than fulfils the expectations raised by that grim but compelling story of financial, political and moral corruption in India. Growing up in Delhi in the 1970s, the eight-year-old Ajay Mishra believed that his father ‘had been assigned to us by the government. This was because he appeared to serve no purpose.’
Everything changes when Mr Mishra leaves for America in 1978, followed a year later by Ajay, his 12-year-old brother Birju, and their mother. What starts out as a beautifully observed story about the dislocations of immigration is brought up short when Birju suffers catastrophic brain damage as the result of an accident. While Ajay gradually grows up, does well at school, dates girls, goes to Princeton, and embarks on a career as an investment banker, Birju remains immobilised in the family home in suburban New Jersey, unable to speak, see or feed himself, permanently catheterised, and entirely dependent on his parents and brother.
In bare outline the book sounds unbearably bleak. Without diminishing the tragedy at its centre, however, Sharma has produced a novel that is both exhilarating and often very funny. He achieves this partly by the astonishing clarity and economy of his writing, but also because the story is seen entirely from the perspective of Ajay, a perspective skewed by childhood and adolescence.
Sharma is particularly good on the ruthless egotism of children. Ajay had been jealous of his clever older brother, and his immediate reaction upon hearing that Birju has had an accident and will have to go to hospital is ‘irritation’: ‘I was certain our mother would feel bad for him and give him a gift.’
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