A review by johndiconsiglio
Family Life by Akhil Sharma

4.0

Warning: Family Life is slim, but it ain’t light. An immigrant fairy tale turned nightmare. An Indian family barely arrives in Queens before a horrible tragedy strikes one son. No longer just strangers-in-a-strange-land, their grief makes them strangers to each other. Engrossing, unnerving and brilliantly unrelenting in its detail. Semi-autobiographical, the author reportedly spent 12 years honing its 200 pages. His effort to get every painful word right paid off. Recalls James Agee’s wonderful A Death in the Family. But there’s precious little light at the end of this tunnel.