New Yorker Fiction 2014

A WRITER'S WIT
Believe not those who say
    The upward path is smooth,
Lest thou shouldst stumble in the way
    And faint before the truth.
Anne Brontë
Born January 17, 1820

New Yorker Fiction 2014

Gerald Slota

January 20, 2013, Akhil Sharma, “A Mistake”: An Indian family of four move from Delhi to Queens in the late 1970s to establish a new life. ¶ The title of a story, usually, is the harbinger of what is to come, and yet we’re often surprised by what happens. Here we think the mistake might be the move to America, where everything is strange to the seven-year-old narrator who gets bullied in his new school—until his father puts a stop to it. Then we think the mistake might be his older brother Birju’s application to a science academy—studying day and night for months—and then Birju is accepted! But the “real” mistake may occur when Birju sustains a serious accident, and it is clear his life will never be the same. ¶ The story reads like autobiography at first—all the delicious details that a child recalls of his world—then it shifts. All of these events could have happened in one’s life—the exchange of humor among family members, affection, fun, then tragedy—but fiction has a way of making us sustain the most difficult part of it last—after the fun is over. A great story. Check it out by clicking on its title above. Sharma’s novel Family Life is forthcoming from Norton.
Gerald Slota, Photographer.

TUESDAY: MY BOOK WORLD

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