Less Is Different

Family Life by Akhil Sharma is a short novel that took twelve years to write.  Many drafts, many revisions, many fresh starts.  Sharma’s difficulties have been well documented.  Some may have arisen from the autobiographical aspects of the novel (and the inevitable emotional consequences), while others are mostly technical. Such is the life of the creative artist.  He deals with the technical aspects of his art.  Those have their own demands, their own momentum.  But if he’s creating something worthwhile, there will also be pains and difficulties akin to childbirth.  He’s extracting (expelling?) something personal, something that will therefore have special value to the reader, and that process can hurt, and it can take time.

Here the question of narrator is paramount.  The story is told in the first person by one of two sons in an Indian family that emigrates to the United States. As the narrator ages his outlook matures, but nonetheless his viewpoint is limited by his age, his nature, and his cultural background.  He sees life in the USA through the eyes of a young recent immigrant, and as such his take can be misleading, insightful, amusing, and sad.  Like Rief Larson in The Selected Works of T S Spivet, or Mark Haddan in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the child narrator (in these cases very special ones) have particular gifts to bestow.  Their limitations are also their strengths.  It’s a way for the author to get us look at things with a fresh (if constrained) perspective.  The limitations here are severe, and the result is rewarding.  This is far from the Indian family epic novel (A Suitable Boy).  There is no sprawling, no horizontal spread of any kind, and little appeal to the senses as well. This is a pared down matter of fact version of events that says as much about the teller as about what is told.

In the end we know what matters to the narrator, but we know mostly because of what is not said, what has been omitted.  It’s a reminder that any viewpoint is limited.  It’s a blow to the heart of the omniscient narrator, and it’s a reminder that humility is never out of place.  Is there a meta-narrator that is offering us this limited view, someone who knows its limitations?  An actor, an impersonator, a master of ceremonies?  Perhaps, but her never makes an explicit appearance.  Except as author.