Rating The Realness

Family Life by Akhil Sharma

Right off the bat with a title like Family  Life, one would think "Oh, this novel must focus on a family and the individual relationships with one another and somewhere along the way tragedy strikes and slowly dismantles the bonds of love." Ok, maybe I took that a bit far and maybe that's not what the book is about at all, but I will tell you this, the author's message was certainly eye opening.

Whenever tragedy strikes in person's life whether directly or indirectly it hurts. To write about such an experience on paper must cause even more pain but I guess brings a sense of closure in a way as well. After reading the novel, I took time to reflect, and not just on whether or not I actually liked the book but on life. I know it sound pretty sappy and unoriginal but it's the truth. The author, Akhil Sharma has admitted to taking  12 years to write this novel only to "get it right", and in my opinion, he did. Most critics would say that Akhil spent too much time on certain topics and only used that as an excuse to fill up pages but I disagree. I look at it this way, when something traumatic happens in one's life you don't get over it in a finger snap(and if you do I'm convinced your not human). In order to heal a wound and move on past the initial shock you must take time to reflect on every piece of the event that led up to the moment. When the boys father turned to alcoholism as a way of coping with tragedy it was important for the author to drag out descriptions and explanations in order to make the reader FEEL like they were actually there. Without a strong connection with the audience in any form of art or entertainment, your performance or final product means nothing.

Sometime we humans just read the words in a book to just read(I'm guilty of it myself ), but maybe sometimes we need to focus on what feeling is trying to be conveyed rather than how many pages are left until the chapter is over.