In this NYT’s Best Books of 2014 selection, Sharma portrays the Mishra family over a period of about 25 years as they move from middle class life in noisy, smelly, and wonderfully familiar Delhi to a new life of disruption and ultimately, tragedy in America.  The story is told through the eyes of Ajay, the 8 year old brother of 12 year old Birju.  While visiting an aunt in Virginia away from their one room apartment in Queens, Birju dives into a swimming pool and ends up brain injured and permanently and severely disabled.  That event dominates the family’s entire life, first in a hospital, then a nursing home, and then in their newly acquired home in New Jersey, bought with the insurance money.  The father becomes an alcoholic, the mother loses herself in Birju’s care, and Ajay is left to stumblingly find his way through junior high, high school, Princeton, and investment banking.  At the age of 32+ he finds himself at a Mexican resort with a woman he cares about and feels happy for the first time—a confusing time but perhaps the beginning of a new life.  A moving and beautifully rendered novel.