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Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry
PDF Ebook Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry
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Rohinton Mistry’s enthralling novel is at once a domestic drama and an intently observed portrait of present-day Bombay in all its vitality and corruption. At the age of seventy-nine, Nariman Vakeel, already suffering from Parkinson’s disease, breaks an ankle and finds himself wholly dependent on his family. His step-children, Coomy and Jal, have a spacious apartment (in the inaptly named Chateau Felicity), but are too squeamish and resentful to tend to his physical needs.
Nariman must now turn to his younger daughter, Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two sons, who share a small, crowded home. Their decision will test not only their material resources but, in surprising ways, all their tolerance, compassion, integrity, and faith. Sweeping and intimate, tragic and mirthful, Family Matters is a work of enormous emotional power.
- Sales Rank: #78946 in Books
- Brand: Mistry, Rohinton
- Published on: 2003-11-18
- Released on: 2003-11-18
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l, .73 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
Amazon.com Review
Set during the 1990s in an overcrowded and politically corrupt Bombay, Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters depicts a family being torn apart by lies, love, and its unresolved demons of the past. Nariman Vakeel is an aging patriarch whose advancing Parkinson's disease and its related complications threaten to destroy his large Parsi family. When Nariman breaks his ankle and becomes bedridden, his two stepchildren turn his care over to their half-sister, Roxanne, who lives in a two-room flat with her husband and two sons. What follows is each character's reaction to this situation, from Roxanne's husband's struggle to provide for his family without neglecting his conscience to their sons' coming of age in an era of uncertainty. Expertly interspersed between these dilemmas are Nariman's tortured remembrances of a forbidden love and its inescapable consequences ("no matter where you go in the world, there is only one story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different").
Family Matters is a compelling, emotional, and persuasive testimony to the importance of memories in every family's history. In a poetic style rich with detail, Mistry creates a world where fate dances with free will, and the results are often more familiar than anyone would ever care to admit. --Gisele Toueg
From Publishers Weekly
Warm, humane, tender and bittersweet are not the words one would expect to describe a novel that portrays a society where the government is corrupt, the standard of living is barely above poverty level and religious, ethnic and class divisions poison the community. Yet Mistrys 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. Bombay in the mid-1990s, a once-elegant city in the process of deterioration, is mirrored in the physical situation of elderly retired professor Nariman Vakeel, whose body is succumbing to the progressive debilitation of Parkinsons disease. Narimans apartment, which he shares with his two resentful, middle-aged stepchildren, is also in terrible disrepair. But when an accident forces him to recuperate in the tortuously crowded apartment that barely accommodates his daughter Roxana, her husband and two young boys, family tensions are exacerbated and the limits of responsibility and obligation are explored with a full measure of anguish. In the ensuing situation, everyones behavior deteriorates, and the affecting secret of Narimans thwarted lifetime love affair provides a haunting leitmotif. Light moments of domestic interaction, a series of ridiculous comic situations, ironic juxtapositions and tenderly observed human eccentricities provide humorous relief, as the author of A Fine Balance again explores the tightrope act that constitutes life on this planet. Mistry is not just a fiction writer; he's a philosopher who finds meaning-indeed, perhaps a divine plan in small human interactions. This beautifully paced, elegantly expressed novel is notable for the breadth of its vision as well as its immensely appealing characters and enticing plot.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Yes, family does matter, but Nariman's is falling apart even as he himself crumbles from Parkinson's. The award-winning Mistry revisits Bombay in his latest work, which is slated for a 75,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
60 of 64 people found the following review helpful.
"No matter where you go, there is only one important story."
By Mary Whipple
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 intense 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 out; Roxana makes do in every way possible, tending to Nariman's 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
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
A powerful and moving work of art
By krebsman
This is the first great novel of the 21st Century that I've read. I think FAMILY MATTERS is a masterpiece. I don't use that term often. But this is the real McCoy. The quality of the writing is up there with Tolstoy and Victor Hugo. There is no "magic realism" here. Everything that happens comes out of character and obeys the Law of Cause and Effect. Nothing is arbitrary. This is a novel of karma. Others have summarized the plot. What they don't tell you is how moving this book is. There were several times in the book I found tears streaming down my face. My tears were never for the big moments in the book, but for the small deeds of love among family members: a father for his sons, a boy for his brother, a woman for her father, a small boy for his grandfather. Dickens was really good at writing mean people. So is Mistry, but unlike Dickens, his mean people have a human side, too. You can understand why they are mean and what has made them that way. His good people can be petty and unreasonable at times, too. I ended up loving them all. With his fellow Indians, Mistry shares a kaleidoscopic power of description, but he's also got a strong sense of structure. Whereas all the other Indian books I have read fell apart around ¾ of the way through (GOD OF SMALL THINGS, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN, etc.), FAMILY MATTERS is solidly and logically constructed from beginning to end, making it a work of art. This is a great book by a great writer. I want to read everything Mistry writes. Five stars.
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful.
Family Obligations Tug at Us First
By A Customer
Within Bombay's Towers of Silence, the Parsis expose their dead to hungry vultures-a practice as environmentally friendly as it is macabre. Ethnic Persians who had migrated to India, the Parsis have traditionally led Bombay's commercial class. And though they have become an endangered species due to stagnating birth rates and miscegenation, their Zoroastrianism has largely removed them from the constant squabbling of Bombay's Hindus and Muslims, which a decade ago erupted into carnage and fire.
Behind the riots was the Shiv Sena, a Hindu supremacist band of thugs, whose agenda includes abolishing Valentine's Day, razing mosques and, according to writer Rohinton Mistry, "subjecting innocent letters and postcards to incineration if the address reads Bombay instead of Mumbai." Such is the cultural and political backdrop of this exciting new novel by Mistry.
Any novel set in Bombay must be as vast as the city. Mistry's knowledge of its customs, locales and languages is encyclopedic, his cast of characters panoramic, and his portrayal of Indian attitudes spot on. Indians perceive the use of toilet paper as unhygienic; they often converse in trite proverbs, and their attitude toward the West is decidedly conflicted. So is their attitude toward India, a great country and a "hopeless" one. Indians writing in English are producing some of today's most inspiring and original fiction, and I strongly recommend this one.
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