Family Matters

Set during the 1990s in an overcrowded and politically corrupt Bombay, Rohinton Mistrys 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 Parkinsons 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 characters reaction to this situation, from Roxannes husbands 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 Narimans 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 familys 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