A Life of Adventure and Delight and other fiction

~
I've been waiting a while to read A Life of Adventure and Delight, a collection of short stories by Akhil Sharma (W. W. Norton, 2017), and it was worth it.  Even the stories I'd read before knocked me out all over again.  (Some, if not all of them, have been revised since the original publications.)  David Sedaris wrote a couple of lines about the book that were included on the dust jacket of the hardcover: "There's a great duality to these stories: simple but complex, funny enough to laugh out loud at but emotionally devastating, foreign yet familiar.  What an exciting and original writer this is, and what a knock-out collection."  This really does sum it up. 

A little after ten in the morning Mrs. Shaw walked across Gopal Maurya's lawn to his house.  It was Saturday, and Gopal was asleep on the couch.  The house was dark.  When he first heard the doorbell, the ringing became part of a dream.  Only he had been in the house during the four months since his wife had followed his daughter out of his life, and the sound of the bell joined somehow with his dream to make him feel ridiculous.  Mrs. Shaw rang the bell again.  Gopal woke confused and anxious, the state he was in most mornings.  He was wearing only underwear and socks, but his blanket was cold from sweat.
--From "Cosmopolitan," a short story by Akhil Sharma, A Life of Adventure and Delight, pp. 13-45.  "Cosmopolitan" was first published in The Atlantic (January 1997).

One August afternoon, when Ajay was ten years old, his elder brother, Birju, dove into a pool and struck his head on the cement bottom.  For three minutes, he lay there unconscious.  Two boys continued to swim, kicking and splashing, until finally Birju was spotted below them.  
--From "Surrounded by Sleep," a short story by Akhil Sharma, A Life of Adventure and Delight, pp. 47-67.  An earlier version of "Surrounded by Sleep" was first published in The New Yorker (December 10, 2001).  (It shares a lot of details with Family Life, but even though I'd read that first, the story still had impact.) 

The side of the police van slid open, rattling, and he was shoved inside.  There were seven or eight men already sitting on the floor in the dark, their wrists handcuffed behind them.  Nobody said anything.  The van started with a jerk, then picked up speed.  His legs were stretched out in front of him, and he tried to use his cuffed hands to balance himself, but the plastic cuffs tightened, and he and the other men went rolling across the floor like loose bottles.  
--From "A Life of Adventure and Delight," a short story by Akhil Sharma, A Life of Adventure and Delight, pp. 127-145.  "A Life of Adventure and Delight" was first published in The New Yorker (May 16, 2016). 

We lived frugally.  If somebody was coming to the house, my mother moved the plastic gallon jugs of milk to the front of the refrigerator and filled the other shelves with vegetables from the crisper.  
--From "The Well," a short story by Akhil Sharma, A Life of Adventure and Delight, pp. 185-199.  "The Well" was first published in The Paris Review (Fall 2016). 


This is going to be--no, I don't want to be categorical--this could be the start of a virtuous circle.  My psychologist has told me that I need to say positive things to myself, only I don't want to be too positive, as that might just make things worse.  But I can say this: My life is a mess and I'm going to try to sort it out, starting with the small things.  Then, later, I'll be able to deal with bigger, more complicated things; buying blinds is a lifeline that's been thrown to me from dry land as I flail and flounder in the waves, I muse, and I park the car outside IKEA.
--From "Nice and Mild," a short story by Gunnhild Øyehaug, from her collection Knots, translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), pp. 3-12.  I first read Øyehaug's story "Two by Two," Knots pp. 142-164, in The Best of McSweeney's, a collection edited by Dave Eggers and Jordan Bass (McSweeney's, 2013).  It was previously included in Issue 35 of the magazine in a section dedicated to Norwegian fiction.