Family Matters (Paperback)

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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)

See all Product Description

• Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > M
• Books > Fiction > By Period
• Books > Fiction > World > Canadian
• Books > Fiction > World > Indian

• Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
• I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
• I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.