Family Matters

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

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A wonderful book - Rated
This book still resonates many years after first reading it. The charachters are three dimensional and they grow in maturity and humanity as the book progresses. A wonderful read.

A clever title - Rated
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.

A wonderful book! - Rated
I adored this book about an Indian family, with a sad past, living in Bombay (Mumbai). Roxana's ageing father, Nariman, comes to live with the family in their tiny flat. He has Parkinsons, has broken his leg and is unable to move and requires full caring which Roxana is happy to provide. However, her husband Yezad resents his presence in the flat. He also has money worries which later lead him to folly.

The book deals with the caste system, as well as getting old in a really touching way. There is a wonderful passage which moved me to tears when Yezad sets aside his mixed feelings of resentment and respect, and cuts Narimans fingernails, toenails and shaves him. How very true when Yezad is pondering sickness in old age "....But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exeption..... and if we could recognise this from the start what a saving in pain and grief and misery."

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, it is written really tenderly but there is also humour and you cannot help but feel anguish for the characters, who, with Mistry's beautiful writing, are real and touchable.

“No matter where you go, there’s only one important story. - Rated
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

Trying to Live Together - Rated
The subject of the novel is a 79 year old widower with parkinson's disease, which, might at first glance not appear a gripping read. The real story is a family's disfunctional relationships with each other and the unsaid between them hanging like a dead weight in the air. The 79 year old grandpa of the clan lives with his unmarried daughter and son but when one day he falls and breaks his leg its more than his beloved uptight daughter can cope with, all those bedpans, smells and various excretions of the body are too much for her to handle. As a result daddy is dispatched to her half sister who lives in a one bedroom flat with her husband and two boys. The real success of the book is to describe how the simple act of coping with the father's illness and reflections on his life and past failures bring that small family together. The lesson being how accepting one another smells and all can be not only a cleanser for the soul but also an uplifting experience. Its hard to imagine that this could fill 500 pages however there are many implications in this simple storyline, the changing relationships of the family, the money worries, the guilt of various parties, the relfections and regrets of the past, learning to accept one-another warts and all and just the daily goings on. I really enjoyed some of the detail, the problems the family face which probably confront us all at some stage and the various subsidary characters such as a neighbour who is obsessed with DIY but is completely hopeless at it. My only complaint is that I felt the novel was a little too long and the story didn't really hold together as well when the central character of the father fades from the scene as his illness takes hold.