- Hardcover: 496 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; First edition edition (8 April 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571194273
- ISBN-13: 978-0571194278
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.2 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 554,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Family Matters
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More About the Author
Product Description
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
An intricate story of domestic conflict set against modern-day Bombay. This is a beautifully realised world with all too human characters.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A clever title,
By
This review is from: Family Matters (Paperback)
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.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful book!,
This review is from: Family Matters (Hardcover)
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.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A certain schoolbook simplicity,
By
This review is from: Family Matters: 1 (Paperback)
This book gives insight into life in Bombay for a struggling young family - and the privations and problems of being old in that society too. There is warmth and a kind of innocence in the way the stories unfold, giving a skilfully woven picture of a whole layer of society - its tragedies and comedies, its sadness and joy.
It's a very long book in which much happens to not very much effect, and there is a certain schoolbook simplicity in the way people are portrayed that made me rather impatient to get to the end. This book is not a patch on his later novel A Fine Balance. For true Mistry magic, read that one.
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