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.

From Booklist
Mistry's flawless style and absolute yet inconspicuous command of character, place, and story made prizewinners of his previous novels, including A Fine Balance (1996). He now presents a magnetic tale of family obligations that comes as close to perfect as a novel can get. The setting is the ever-hectic city of Bombay during a 1990s wave of violent religious extremism, and the focus is on an extended Parsi family suffering the long-term consequences of a Juliet and Romeo-like tragedy. Septuagenarian widower Nariman survived the catastrophic love affair, but Parkinson's disease is now eroding his health and autonomy, forcing him to confront his guilt over capitulating to his family's vehement objections to the non-Parsi love of his life and entering into an unhappy arranged marriage with a Parsi widow with two children. Nariman and his wife had one daughter together, the sweet-natured Roxana, who lives joyfully in a tiny apartment on a tight budget with her two magnificent sons and loving husband, while regretful Nariman lives in an enormous but neglected flat with his deeply resentful stepdaughter and lazy and timid stepson. These two diametrically opposed households collide when Nariman becomes bed-ridden, an event that places incalculable emotional, physical, and financial strains on everyone, causing even the scrupulously honest to cheat, and exposing the hypocrisy of religious beliefs that cause strife instead of fostering tolerance and generosity. A discerning social observer and master dramatist, Mistry evokes laughter and tears as he spins the great wheel of human life and charts the soul's confusion and the body's decline, the endless cycle of repeated mistakes and failures of heart, and, yes, the radiant revelations of love. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?Once again, Rohinton Mistry has written an absolutely fabulous novel.?
?Noah Richler, National Post

?He ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.?
?Atlantic Monthly

?The reader is moved, even to tears, by these rites of passage among characters we have lived with long enough to feel as family. . . . The exercise of compassion, by the writer and then by the reader, remains one of the novel?s chief duties and complex pleasures.?
?John Updike, The New Yorker

?A magnetic tale that comes as close to perfect as a novel can get.?
?Booklist

?Magnificent.?Family Matters could well be one of the finest novels most of us will ever read. It is certainly a masterpiece.?
?Irish Times

?Warm, humane, tender and bittersweet.?The author of A Fine Balance again explores the tightrope act that constitutes life on this planet.?This beautifully paced, elegantly expressed novel is notable for the breadth of its vision as well as its immensely appealing characters and enticing plot.?
?Publishers Weekly (starred review)

?For the purposefulness and clarity of his moral vision, there is no better writer living in Canada today.?Mistry weaves a marvelous tapestry.??
?Montreal Gazette

?Family Matters moves and engages at every moment.?Mistry is among the most distinguished of the Indian writers currently visible, partly because he does not try to make India itself his main subject.?His real territory if the divided heart.?
?Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books

?Heart-breaking and utterly beguiling.??
?The Herald (U.K.)

?Compassionately attentive to the blend of tragedy and comedy and strikes the notes of each with grace, precision and tenderness.??
?Edmonton Journal

?Impressive. . . . Wry and richly perceptive.??
?Times Literary Supplement

?A giant among writers.?A vibrant and full-bodied novel.?
?Chicago Tribune

?Compelling and rich.??
?Globe and Mail

?With deceptive simplicity, Mistry draws his fine balance between scepticism and affirmation, faith and bigotry, family nurture and control.?
?The Guardian (U.K.)

[He is] blessed by talent as natural as breathing.??
?Maclean?s

?His prose style is as clear as a pane of newly polished glass.?
?The Economist

?Mistry remains one of our most important writers ?one of our most important moral voices.??
?Quill & Quire

ANNOTATION

Shortlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The setting is Bombay, mid-1990s. Nariman Vakeel, suffering from Parkinson's disease, is the elderly patriarch of a small, discordant family. In a building called Chateau Felicity, he and his two middle-aged stepchildren - Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her just-younger brother, Jal, mild mannered and acquiescent - occupy a once-elegant apartment whose ruin is progressing as rapidly as Nariman's disease. Coomy has "rules to govern every aspect of [Nariman's] shrunken life," but even she cannot keep him from his evening walks. When he stumbles and breaks an ankle (fulfilling one of Coomy's nagging prophecies), she has hardly said "I told you so" before she is plotting to turn his round-the-clock care over to her younger, sweet-tempered half sister. Roxana, her husband, and their two sons live in an already overcrowded apartment, but Coomy knows that Roxana will not refuse her. What Coomy cannot know is that she has set in motion a great unraveling (and an unexpected repair) of the family - and a revelation of its deeply love-torn past.

FROM THE CRITICS

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 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. 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 Parkinson's disease. Nariman's 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, everyone's behavior deteriorates, and the affecting secret of Nariman's 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 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal