Scenes from Early Life: A Novel
*Starred Review* One of life’s great pleasures is a book that fools you. Hensher’s latest is a novelistic recounting of a real family in the years before and after Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan. Hensher leads you on a leisurely stroll through the family’s comfortable life: the spacious house with servants, the children playing in the street, the mangos and chilies drying on the balcony. We get to know the gardener, the humble music teacher, the respectable men in respectable professions, all the cast of characters that looms so large in the childhood world of the narrator and favored grandson, Saadi. It is only with time that we perceive Hensher’s artistry. Small details like who will fix a water faucet are revealed to have complicated sociological aspects. Passing references to a difficult past hint at the terrors that accompanied partition from India. And the careful work that Hensher has put into portraying these people and their world pays off as we see them threatened with the growing aggression of West Pakistan and understand the toll that political uncertainty and mutual distrust take on the lives of good people. Scenes from Early Life starts out charming, develops into something warm and engaging, and ends up packing a wallop. --Lynn Weber