Book Review Only extraordinary writers can write a gripping novel without a neat plot. Akhil Sharma’s slim novel (228 pages in the hardbound edition that I got – it would be just half of that if formatted a la the old Penguin pocket edition) tells the story of the Mishra family in America. Everything is going fine for this newly migrated family when tragedy strikes in the form of an accident that the elder son, Birju, meets with. The accident renders Birju practically lifeless: severely brain-damaged. The novel shows how this tragedy affects the other three family members. The story is told by the younger son, Ajay, who is eight years old at the beginning of the novel. Ajay grows up seeing his father becoming an alcoholic and mother struggling to cope with the hardships. Ajay has a grudge somewhere within him about mother’s fondness for the comatose Birju. What makes the novel marvellous is the way the novelist expresses the feelings, emotions and attitudes of his
Cerebrate and Celebrate