Review of Sharma’s heart-rending second novel.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: At a luncheon in Manhattan hosted by his publishers to promote his second novel Family Life (218 pages, hardcover, W. W. Norton & Company, $23.95) Akhil Sharma spoke briefly, gave a glimpse into the inner turmoil he went through finishing it. It took him 13 years writing it, went through three computers honing it.
Reading it, one can understand why it took so long and perhaps more importantly, what it meant for Sharma, to bare it for the world: it’s his and his family’s indelible tragedy after all, in heart-rending, microscopic detail.
Family Life is as good a novel about the Indian immigrant experience in the United States ever written, including by Jhumpa Lahiri. What sets Family Life apart, makes it unique, is that in essence it’s a story of the author’s early years. Of him rising to success – at least academically, financially and in the process finding some measure of succor – from the terrible clutches of tragedy that shrouds his family one fine day in summer like a sudden whirlpool that threatens to suck everybody under, warped the lives of his parents, his older brother, and his, forever. His brilliant brother doesn’t drown in an accident in a swimming pool, but becomes perpetually bed-ridden, incapacitated, brain dead.
It’s a novel which Sharma has admitted to being about his life, a memoir without the exertions of being exact about details. It’s amazing to know that Sharma for most of his life in America, till he gets admitted to Princeton and then goes to become a wealthy investment banker, a successful writer, lived a life surrounded by self-doubt about reality, his own worth and his future.
The tragedy of his brother in America taught him to comprehend at an early age the permanent predicament of his wasted brother, who was supposed to be the beacon of success; to understand the helplessness of his once-ambitious father’s dive into alcoholism. To gauge the pain of his loving mother’s fight for sanity, her struggles to present a bold face, calm demeanor in society.
In the face of tragedy which creates a myopia of shame too, Sharma creates a make-believe optimistic world for himself to ward off being dragged into failure, which would have been an easy option as there were no expectations of him from his family.
After his brother’s accident, Sharma’s world transmogrified into a daily load of hurt. His mother’s obstinate pretense that everything is ok, that his brother will become fine one day; to shamefully hide from friends and family his father’s addiction; clean his brother daily of excretions, but humanize, glorify him at school, confide to him his secrets.
Sharma yearned for his mother’s love, but instead gets berated, felt inconsequential in his family. His father, an accountant by profession, always was the distant type, even when the family lived in Delhi before moving to the US when Ajay was eight years old, at ease knowing that his wife took care of the boys.
The novel also gives a crisp account of the meddlesome, inquisitive desis who intrude into the family’s pain, when they relocate to New Jersey. It’s an attention which is unwelcome, bringing along strangers into the house, miracle workers with their useless alternate therapies for cures, and those who seeks blessings. The novel also touches upon the early days of the wave of immigration, the birth of the Little India on Oaktree Road in Edison.
In Sharma’s debut novel – An Obedient Father – arguably the best novel ever set in Delhi, the writing had great vigor and relish to it, pinpointing the corrupt bureaucratic system of the capital, the warts and blemishes of politicians. In Family Life, Sharma is more circumspect in revelation, almost like when the stage goes dark on stage at crucial junctures, or the windows of a curtain to a house are drawn at certain times of the day and night. The middle of the book comes off as sanitized writing, gives equal weightage to all the characters. The end result is building up empathy for all of them, including the narrator Ajay, a self-absorbed boy who comes to the US at the age of eight, under the shadow of his meritorious brother.
The novel is a remarkable read for several reasons. One of them also being the underlying fact that it’s a quintessential story about Indian perseverance and dedication to academics, a surefire way to success, emulated by generations.
Birju studied hard to be accepted to the Ivy League of high schools, the Bronx High School for Science, destined for medical school, before tragedy cuts short his dreams. Ajay changes his life around and gives a measure of relief to his parents by hard work at high school, and at Princeton.
This is how Sharma explains it, through Ajay: ‘Nearly everyone appeared to have gone to preparatory schools and already knew such things as the fact that there was no inflation during the Middle Ages. Very few, however, were willing to work the way I did.
‘When I would come out of Firestone Library at two in the morning, walk past the strange statues scattered around campus, and then sit at my desk in my room till the trees in the yard appeared out of the darkness, I felt that I was achieving something, that every hour I worked was generating almost physical value, as if I could touch the knowledge I was gaining through my work.’
There are myriad true stories in America of immigrants who had a harsh life in their home country, before they came to the US with a few dollars, and made millions, became a success. Family Life is a gem of a story in how life does not always change for the better in America, it could get worse. A story on how to cope with life in the face of tragedy like the Mishras do in the novel, with dignity. And finally, how to rebuild life out of the ashes of failure and loss.
But as Sharma gives ample indication at the end of the novel, sometimes even that may not be enough.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar.)