Summary

“Family Life” is told from a third-person past point of view. The main character, Nicolas Broda, is described as an exceptionally emotionless young man who studied at university as an advanced math student and worked as a programmer. On the seventh of July, he woke up and heard a saucepan crash on the floor in the next room. He thought, “every house sounds different” (57), but he did not know why. It was Saturday, and he did not have to go anywhere except the Computer Centre, where he worked, and he could go at any time, so he luxuriated in bed for some time before getting up and realizing that he had not wound his alarm clock, and that he had changed it from the usual 8:00 to 8:30. The saucepan sounded again and he remembered that the night before he had gone to his friend...