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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.
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.
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A SPLASH OF LIGHT from the late-afternoon sun lingered at the foot of Nariman's bed as he ended his nap and looked towards the clock. It was almost six. He glanced down where the warm patch had lured his toes. Knurled and twisted, rendered birdlike by age, they luxuriated in the sun's comfort. His eyes fell shut again.
By and by, the scrap of sunshine drifted from his feet, and he felt a vague pang of abandonment. He looked at the clock again: gone past six now. With some difficulty he rose to prepare for his evening walk. In the bathroom, while he slapped cold water on his face and gargled, he heard his stepson and stepdaughter over the sound of the tap.
"Please don't go, Pappa, we beseech you," said Jal through the door, then grimaced and adjusted his hearing aid, for the words had echoed deafeningly in his own ear. The device was an early model; a metal case the size of a matchbox was clipped to his shirt pocket and wired to the earpiece. It had been a reluctant acquisition four years ago, when Jal had turned forty-five, but he was not yet used to its vagaries.
"There, that's better," he said to himself, before becoming loud again: "Now, Pappa, is it too much to ask? Please stay home, for your own good."
"Why is this door shut that we have to shout?" said Coomy. "Open it, Jal."
She was two years younger than her brother, her tone sharper than his, playing the scold to his peacemaker. Thin like him, but sturdier, she had taken after their mother, with few curves to soften the lines and angles. During her girlhood, relatives would scrutinize her and remark sadly that a father's love was sunshine and fresh water without which a daughter could not bloom; a stepfather, they said, was quite useless in this regard. Once, they were careless and spoke in her hearing. Their words had incandesced painfully in her mind, and she had fled to her room to weep for her dead father.
Jal tried the bathroom door; it was locked. He scratched his thick wavy hair before knocking gently. The inquiry failed to elicit a response.
Coomy took over. "How many times have I told you, Pappa? Don't lock the door! If you fall or faint inside, how will we get you out? Follow the rules!"
Nariman rinsed the lather from his hands and reached for the towel. Coomy had missed her vocation, he felt. She should have been a headmistress, enacting rules for hapless schoolgirls, making them miserable. Instead, here she was, plaguing him with rules to govern every aspect of his shrunken life. Besides the prohibition against locked doors, he was required to announce his intention to use the wc. In the morning he was not to get out of bed till she came to get him. A bath was possible only twice a week when she undertook its choreography, with Jal enlisted as stage manager to stand by and ensure his safety. There were more rules regarding his meals, his clothes, his dentures, his use of the radiogram, and in charitable moments Nariman accepted what they never tired of repeating: that it was all for his own good.
He dried his face while she continued to rattle the knob. "Pappa! Are you okay? I'm going to call a locksmith and have all the locks removed, I'm warning you!"
His trembling hands took a few moments to slide the towel back on the rod. He opened the door. "Hello, waiting for me?"
"You'll drive me crazy," said Coomy. "My heart is going dhuk-dhuk, wondering if you collapsed or something."
"Never mind, Pappa is fine," said Jal soothingly. "And that's the main thing."
Smiling, Nariman stepped out of the...
Au sujet de l’auteur-
Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives near Toronto. His first novel, Such a Long Journey, received, among other awards, the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book of the Year. In 1995, A Fine Balancewon the second annual Giller Prize and, in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Mistry is also the author of Swimming Lessons, a collection of short stories.
Critiques-
Starred review from July 15, 2002 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. 75,000 first printing; BOMC, Literary Guild and QPB alternates; 7-city author tour.
April 1, 2013
An elderly man becomes disabled and must move into his daughter's crowded Bombay house in this multigenerational family story. (LJ 5/1/02)
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
John Updike, The New Yorker
"Mistry harks back to the 19th-century novelists. . . . The reader is moved, even to tears."
The New York Times
"[Mistry] needs no infusion of magical realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical."
The Seattle Times
"Mistry . . . solidifies his standing as one of the world's finest authors . . . Come to [this book] with the anticipation or foreboding you'd bring to a letter from home. You'll be rewarded luxuriously."
Chicago Tribune
"Mistry [is] a giant of a writer. . . . [an] almost perfect example of the storyteller's art."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Mistry writes with a patient attention to language, structure, and detail reminiscent of. . . .Tolstoy and Tagore... His greatest strength lies in depicting the human heart, in all its longing and imperfection, with unsentimental tenderness."
Time
"Worthy of the 19th-century masters."
New York Review of Books
"Subtle and true . . . His evocation of the streets and sounds of jostling Bombay is almost painfully alive."
The Atlantic
"Rohinton Mistry is not a household name, but it should be. . . . he ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive. . . . Major writers differ from minor ones. . . in their ability to handle the big questions: death, family, the passing of time, the inevitability of loss, God or the corresponding God-shaped hole. Mistry handles all of them in an accomplished style entirely his own."
The Oregonian
"Mistry's prose is expansive, generous to its characters and ample in story. . . . Frequently clear-eyed, courageous and deeply entertaining."
Baltimore Sun
"As much a tribute to the spirit of Bombay as it is a portrait of domestic life in modern India. . . . Mistry's quiet sense of humor enlivens the story and makes it a delight to follow."
Newsday
"Imagine a 19th-century realist sensibility probing the abiding mysteries of India in our time. Leo Tolstoy meets R. K. Narayan. . . . Mistry's compassion for [his] people is boundless."
Buffalo News
"A wonderfully perceptive and sometimes hilarious exploration of the complexities of family life. . . . A novel of great wisdom, beauty and power--a book to be treasured."
The Observer (London)
"Almost Tolstoyan in registry and range . . . To say Mistry captures the textures of India well and creates larger-than-life characters is to note the least of his achievements."
Globe & Mail
"As compelling and rich as either of Mistry's other novels . . . the world in a two-room flat. . . . Mistry depicts the sort of family love that grounds us in the world."
The Guardian (UK)
"Stealthily, even movingly, Mistry reveals small triumphs of humanity over distaste, minute shifts that signal leaps of compassion."
Time Out New York
"Mistry has created a meticulously evoked, deliberately paced portrait of decay and ruin. . . . It is not a pretty picture, but Mistry makes it warmhearted and stirring all the same."
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