Product Description

Nariman Vakeel, a seventy-nine-year-old Parsi widower, beset by Parkinson's disease and haunted by memories of the past, lives in a once-elegant apartment with his two middle-aged stepchildren. When his condition worsens he is forced to take up residence with Roxana, his own daughter, her husband, Yezad, and their two young sons. The effect of the new responsibility on Yezad, who is already besieged by financial worries, pushes him into a scheme of deception. This sets in motion a series of events - a great unravelling and a revelation of the family's lovetorn past - that leads to the narrative's final outcome.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72761 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As an epigraph to his humane and generous novel Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry uses a reverse version of Tolstoy's words from Anna Karenina--"Each happy family is happy in its own way, but all unhappy families resemble one another". The unhappy family in this book belongs to Nariman Vakeel, an elderly, retired English teacher in Bombay. His stepson Jal and stepdaughter Coomy look after the old man, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, but a street accident renders him even more in need of help. Resentfully Jal and Coomy provide it but, when opportunity offers, they deliver Nariman into the care (and flat) of his daughter Roxana, the much-loved offspring of what was an otherwise loveless marriage. Roxana is married with two children and lives in cramped conditions that the arrival of the now bed-ridden old man makes worse. The tensions of the present and rankling discontents from the past collide as Mistry's narrative unfolds. At the heart of the story is the literal claustrophobia of the flat and the metaphorical claustrophobia of a family bound tightly together by the deeply ambivalent emotions of its members but Family Matters is not a limited or restricted novel.

Through the stories of Roxana's husband Yezad and her sons Murad and Jehangir, Mistry opens the book to lives outside the family. Characters like Yezad's ebullient employer Mr Kapur, the eager but incompetent handyman Edul Munshi, the violinist Daisy Ichhaporia and others provide a keen sense of the wider world of Bombay in which the family dramas are secretively played out. What best emerges from the novel is Mistry's compassionate sense of the frustrations, temptations and everyday sufferings life imposes on all his characters. All, in the end, resemble one another in the accommodations and compromises they are obliged to make. --Nick Rennison

Review
'One of the finest novels that most of us will ever read. It certainly is a masterpiece.' Irish Times; 'Mistry skilfully manipulates a diverse cast of characters... [in] this wry and richly perceptive novel.' Times Literary Supplement

From an author whose previous two novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize comes this profoundly moving story of a family's struggle through illness, financial hardship and deep-seated personal resentments. Set in modern-day Bombay with its perennial problems of poverty, corruption and religious and political turmoil, the story centres around Nariman Contractor, who is confined to bed with Parkinson's disease. His two step-children throw him out of the home he shares with them and he goes to stay with his beloved daughter, Roxana and her husband and two sons in their tiny flat. An already stretched household budget is not enough to support this extra burden and the family sinks into a downward spiral of gloom, debt and suspicion as her husband resorts to gambling and her younger son takes bribes from his classmates to try to alleviate their hardship. This novel has all the ingredients of a Shakespearean tragedy and it is no accident that the author alludes on more than one occasion to King Lear. Years of unhappiness resulting from the refusal of Nariman's parents to allow him to marry his lover from a different religion, his subsequent arranged marriage and the resentment felt by his adopted children towards him and their sister, explode into a few cathartic weeks in which we experience the tenderness and cruelty of human relationships, comedy, pathos and death, and finally a return to a semblance of normality. Mistry pulls no punches in his descriptions of the relentless progress of Parkinson's disease and the loss of dignity and suffering of all those affected, but such is his insight into the human condition and the warmth with which his writing is infused that, rather than being simply shocked or revolted, the reader is left deeply moved, with an overriding sense of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to triumph over adversity. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay in 1952, and has lived in Canada since 1975. He is the author of a collection of short stories. Tales from Firozsha Baag, and two novels, Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance, both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Customer Reviews

A clever title
Painted on a much smaller canvas than his earlier novels (Such a Long Journey; A Fine Balance; Tales from the Firozshah Baag), it is a wonderful as the others. It focuses on one family and revolves round the care of the 79 year old patriarch who is crippled and afflicted with progressive Parkinsonism. Though there are some mean-spirited characters in the novel, the affection of others is very touching. The love of the nine year old boy for his grandfather is especially heart-warming. Mistry has the gift of bringing sheer unforced goodness to life like no other writer.

“No matter where you go, there’s only one important story.
As Mistry makes clear in this novel, the one important story is "of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption...Just the details are different." With these themes as the bedrock of his story, he depicts the world of a multigenerational Parsi family in Bombay, their world changed forever when Nariman Vakeel, a 79-year-old former professor and sufferer from Parkinson’s disease, falls and breaks his leg, effectively ending any possibility of an independent life. His stepchildren, Coomy and Jal, quickly dump Nariman in the two-room apartment of their younger half-sister, Roxana Chenoy, her husband Yezad, and two sons, supposedly for only three weeks, while his leg heals. Beset with financial problems, lack of space, and resentment of Coomy and Jal, who remain in their father’s 7-room apartment, the family does its best, but tensions rise and slowly erode their relationships, precipitating a number of personal crises for each family member.

Concentrating more on the world writ small than on the broader, more expansive views of A Fine Balance, Mistry creates a number of vibrant and fully drawn characters. Nariman Vakeel, recalling his dreams and disappointments, his 11-year love for Lucy Braganza, and his disastrous arranged marriage, is touching in his neediness and in his apologetic helplessness. His grandchildren delight in his stories and seek ways to help; Roxana makes do in every way possible, tending to his most personal needs; and Yezad, frustrated by the lack of financial support from Coomy and Jal and a job in which he is underpaid, feels jealous of the old man’s claims on Roxana. Mistry’s dialogue, the subtle and not-so-subtle undercurrents it reflects, the often humorous interactions, the honest but naïve motivations of some of the characters, and the meticulously depicted and subtle decline of the family are the work of a master.

The one jarring note for me was the use of Shiv Sena, a fanatic political/religious group as a motif thoughout the novel, their threats, extortion, violence, and fundamentalist rhetoric intruding periodically (and often dramatically) on the lives of the characters. While this obviously broadens the scope of the novel and offers a context in which to evaluate Coomy’s religiosity, the fears of small businessmen like Yezad and his boss, and Yezad’s eventual conflicts with one of his sons, it felt contrived to me, too strong and too obvious in what is otherwise a novel of more subtle interactions. Mary Whipple

A master of the written word
In one of the chapters of this book, there is a description of the letter-writer, the owner of a bookstore who sits on the sidewalk, writing (and reading) letters for people who cannot read or write. Mistry's description of the joy that the written word can bring into peoples' lives stands out as one of the many jewels in this treasure chest of a book.

Other jewels are the old man Nariman's relationship with his grandson, Jehangir, which grows more and more precious as he becomes a bed-ridden fixture in their living room, holding Jehangir's hand at night when their nightmares haunt them. Nariman's returning memories of the love of his life, which was cut short by his marriage to a suitable woman. The lives of his stepchildren, and their feelings about him. The relationship between Nariman and his daughter, Roxana, and her relationship with her husband. They are all described with a most exquisite choice of words and the eyes of a gentle observer.

Rohinton Mistry is indeed a master storyteller, and I pity those who have not discovered his wonderful books!!