Family Matters (review)

Written by Rohinton Mistry, who was born in Bombay and has been living in Canada since 1975, Family Matters is an impressive and masterful novel. It is sweeping in scope (covering almost five hundred pages), yet intimately detailed in its description of family apartment living in Bombay. The pace was at first ponderous, and I had to remind myself of great Asian films, especially Indian, whose rhythms are slower than the instant hit of Western films. But I soon became caught up in the lives of the wonderful characters in the story.

Nariman Vakeel is a seventy-nine-year-old widower who is stricken with Parkinson's disease and who lives with his two stepchildren—middle-aged spinster Coomey and bachelor Jal—in a once-elegant, seven-room flat. His younger, "blood" daughter, Roxana, lives in a small, two-room apartment with her husband, Yezad, and their two young sons. Nariman breaks an ankle on his daily walk, requiring a full leg cast and bed rest for three weeks. The story is reminiscent of King Lear—which Nariman taught as an English professor—as it becomes a saga of "who will take care of Pappa." Torn between familial bonds, religious obligations stemming from their Parsi background, and bitter memories revolving around the death of their mother, the stepchildren (mainly Coomey) conspire to send Pappa in an ambulance to Roxana's already-crowded apartment. Three weeks extend to four months, during which time we learn—memory by memory, in flashback—of Pappa's love affair with Catholic Lucy, his arranged marriage to Yasmin, the widowed mother of Coomey and Jal, and the horrific accident that ended her life. Meanwhile, Roxana's family suffers from lack of space and privacy and from the onset of poverty as Pappa's medical expenses tip their budget over the edge.

How these characters deal with this family obligation is brilliantly drawn. They are alive and passionate, tragic and comic, cruel and compassionate. Yezad's transformation (two times) is profoundly moving, yet finally ironic. It took me into a new world, a new experience of the senses—especially of smells. The odors of bedpans and unwashed bodies and talcum-dusted armpits in the muggy heat of Bombay swelter through this novel like an olfactory mantra. The theme of corruption—personal and political—dances with that of love and goodness, as represented by Nariman's innocent grandson, whose first act of dishonesty is instigated by his desire to make money for his grandfather's medicine.

Mistry's books have won many literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and Los AngelesTimes Book Prize for Fiction. His books have been shortlisted for the Booker, the International impacDublin Literary Award, and the IrishTimes International Fiction Prize. I can see why.