Family Life (Sharma) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender at its core…Family Life is devastating as it reveals how love becomes warped and jagged and even seemingly vanishes in the midst of huge grief. But it also gives us beautiful, heart-stopping scenes where love in the Mishra family finds air and ease…I found Family Life riveting in its portrayal of an immigrant community's response to loss…But where Family Life really blazes is in its handling of Mrs. Mishra's grief. Sharma is compassionate but unflinching as he tells of this mother's persistent and desperate efforts to cope over the years
Sonali Deraniyagala - New York Times Book Review


Surface simplicity and detachment are the hallmarks of this novel, but hidden within its small, unembellished container are great torrents of pity and grief. Sedulously scaled and crafted, it transforms the chaos of trauma into a glowing work of art.
Wall Street Journal


I cannot think of a more honest or unsparing novelist in our generation.
Lorin Stein - Paris Review


Bracingly vivid… Has the ring of all devastatingly good writing: truth.
Molly Langmuir - Elle


[F]ine and memorable.
Meg Wolitzer - NPR


A heartbreaking novel-from-life… [Sharma] takes after Hemingway, as each word of his brilliant novel feels deliberate, and each line is quietly moving.
Maddie Crum - Huffington Post


Sharma spent 13 years writing this slim novel, and the effort shows in each lucid sentence and heartbreaking detail.
Stephen Lee - Entertainment Weekly


(Starred review,) The immigrant experience has been documented in American literature since those first hardy souls landed at Plymouth, and as the immigrants keep coming, so too do their stories. Sharma (An Obedient Father), who acknowledges the autobiographical elements in his new novel, tells a simple but layered tale of assimilation and adaptation. The Mishras come to America in the late-1970s, the father first, in the wake of new U.S. immigration laws and the Indian Emergency, when the narrator, Ajay, is eight, and his brother Birju is 12. There are lovely scenes of their life in Delhi before they leave, the mother making wicks from the cotton in pill bottles, the parade of neighbors when their plane tickets to America arrive. Sharma captures the experience for Ajay of being transported to a different country: the thrill of limitless hot water flowing from a tap; the trauma of bullies at school; the magic of snow falling; watching Birju, the favored son, studying hours each day and spending entire weekends preparing for the entrance exam at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. Then a terrible tragedy irreparably alters the family and their fortunes. Sharma skillfully uses this as another window into the Indian way of accepting and dealing with life. A loving portrait, both painful and honest. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly


The Mishra family has a harder time than most adjusting to a new life in America in the 1970s.... The one drawback is that the last few brief chapters feel rushed after the more deliberate pace of the rest of the novel, which leaves readers wanting to know more. Verdict: This brave and honest work offers an unsentimental look at growing up and overcoming adversity when family life is very difficult indeed. —Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA
Library Journal


In Sharma's world, as in Leo Tolstoy's, unhappy families continue to be unhappy in different ways. In 1978, narrator Ajay's father emigrates from Delhi to New York to take a job as a clerk in a government agency, and a year later, his family joins him..... A moving story of displacement and of the inevitable adjustments one must make when life circumstances change.
Kirkus Reviews