260
Book · 2002
Family Matters
Nariman Vakeel, an elderly retired English professor suffering from Parkinson's disease, lives in Bombay with his two stepchildren. When he breaks an ankle on an evening walk, his stepdaughter plots to shift his round-the-clock care to his younger daughter Roxana. Moving into Roxana's cramped two-room apartment strains her marriage, threatens her family's meager finances, and forces long-buried domestic resentments into the open.
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Yet Mistry's compassionate eye and his ability to focus on the small decencies that maintain civilization, preserve the family unit and even lead to happiness attest to his masterly skill as a writer "who makes sense of the world by using laughter," as one of his characters observes.
From Publishers Weekly Mistry finds truth in the quotidian life of Bombay tenements, minutely trawled through a realism reminiscent of the 19th-century novel. The focus of his new book is the tyranny and solace of family relationships, with an ageing patriarch the catalyst for both conflict and tenderness.
Maya Jaggi on The Guardian True to the rather insistent double meaning of its title, Family Matters is a strong, old-fashioned novel about modern Bombay, telling the story of three generations of a Parsi family.
Adam Mars-Jones on The Guardian
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