What a Happy Family by Saumya Dave is a tender contemporary drama examining the impact of mental health challenges on a well-to-do Indian American family in Atlanta, Ga.
Twenty-something Natasha is the middle child and black sheep of the Joshi family. While everyone around her is powering forward in their lives, Natasha feels stuck and unhappy. Her brilliant sister is a psychiatrist, as is their father. Her brother occupies the family sweet spot: he's a male child attending a prestigious university. Joshi matriarch Bina harbors high hopes that flighty Natasha will settle down in her job and marry her childhood sweetheart, Karan, the son of Bina's closest friend. Instead, Natasha launches her dream career as a stand-up comic, shocking her parents and the local community of watchful aunties.
As with her debut novel, Well-Behaved Indian Women, Dave is fascinated by the generational dynamics in South Asian diaspora families, where the pressure to succeed can take a toll on members who dare to imagine for themselves a different vision of the future. In sharing the intriguing stories of Natasha's siblings and parents in all their complexity, Dave builds suspenseful subplots that simmer alongside Natasha's slow and devastating unraveling as her fledgling comedy efforts backfire and she feels increasingly isolated from those closest to her.
What a Happy Family is a masterful study of immigrant parents and their American children navigating conflicts within their cultural bubble and outside it. Faced with the ultimate test, the Joshis must confront uncomfortable realities if their fragile family unit is to endure and thrive. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer