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3.98 AVERAGE
3.98 AVERAGE
Generally I prefer the middle of books, and feel let down or unsatisified by the ending. With [book:Family Matters] I felt the opposite. I really had to push myself through the middle, but enjoyed the ending. The conclusion is realistic, consistent with the overall tone and message of the book, and sufficient in wrapping up the story without 'happily ever after' or other drivel.
It's a story about three adult siblings who have to take care of their aging invalid father. Jal and Coomy are full brother and sister, unmarried, living with their step-father but deceptfully unload him on Roxana, their half-sister, and her husband and two boys. Roxana's home is much smaller and money becomes even tighter. Everyone struggles between obligation and personal desire and the father's 'scandalous' past.
Though the narrative is placed in India, and its politics, customs, society and religions play a part in the story, the matters of family (and the point that family is important -- both of which are neatly conveyed in the title) applies to every culture and country.
This book is a good one to begin with if you're new to [author:Rohinton Mistry]'s novels. It is just as realistic and unapologetic in its portrayal of life in India (as far as I know) as [book:A Fine Balance], but it is less depressing (and shorter).
It's a story about three adult siblings who have to take care of their aging invalid father. Jal and Coomy are full brother and sister, unmarried, living with their step-father but deceptfully unload him on Roxana, their half-sister, and her husband and two boys. Roxana's home is much smaller and money becomes even tighter. Everyone struggles between obligation and personal desire and the father's 'scandalous' past.
Though the narrative is placed in India, and its politics, customs, society and religions play a part in the story, the matters of family (and the point that family is important -- both of which are neatly conveyed in the title) applies to every culture and country.
This book is a good one to begin with if you're new to [author:Rohinton Mistry]'s novels. It is just as realistic and unapologetic in its portrayal of life in India (as far as I know) as [book:A Fine Balance], but it is less depressing (and shorter).
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Great sense of dusty lives, cramped lives, stress, ineffectualness, temptation and secrets.
I finished reading Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters at the end of summer. I have been meaning to blog about it but kept putting it off. It's hard to do justice to the delicacy with which Mistry depicts the humilations of growing old and useless, and the tragicomedy of seeing a family cope with an aged father. Suffice to say, perhaps, that Family Matters may lack the scope of his A Fine Balance, but it trains its microscope to detect all our human squirmings.
I love Rohinton Mistry's writing. It really engages you and really brings you into the story in a way that few authors can. This story of a family and how that family changes in the faces of illness and the assorted problems that roll along with them. Nariman becomes sicker and sicker and Coomy, his stepdaughter, becomes a villain in the fact that she does all she can to pawn off the sick man onto her half sister's much smaller and poorer household. Coomy's anger of course comes to bite her in the end.
It's a very realistic outlook on the ailing of a relative and the difficulties that crop up. How the family changes to support the added member is interesting and heart breaking. How everything changes in the end for them is especially sad as well.
All this goes on in the political landscape of 1990s Bombay, a fact that probably would had more impact on me if I had any idea about the history or the Parsi culture. Not too much of a deterrent though.
All in all it's a wonderfully written novel. Do take the time to read it.
It's a very realistic outlook on the ailing of a relative and the difficulties that crop up. How the family changes to support the added member is interesting and heart breaking. How everything changes in the end for them is especially sad as well.
All this goes on in the political landscape of 1990s Bombay, a fact that probably would had more impact on me if I had any idea about the history or the Parsi culture. Not too much of a deterrent though.
All in all it's a wonderfully written novel. Do take the time to read it.
After reading A Fine Balance, I looked forward to more from this author. However, sadly I lost interest in this book about two thirds of the way through. I found it dull and somewhat rambling and could not bring myself to have any concern for any of the characters. Perhaps I will return to it in time, when I have nothing else to read.....
As engrossing as [b:A Fine Balance|5211|A Fine Balance|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518291s/5211.jpg|865827] but far less depressing - thank goodness! The family at the centre of this saga are the victims of events and politics, but there are fewer overt comments on the state of the nation, and their hard times are not quite as desperate as those of the tailors in the earlier book.
The selfish Coomy is a wonderful villan almost literally hoist by her own petard, and the history of her step-father's relationships is nicely revealed as the main story of his decline is told. Yezad's response to the problems his family face is credible and there is hope that things may change for the better at the end of the book.
My only difficulty with this, as with [b:Swimming Lessons|19659|Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167274859s/19659.jpg|814396] was my unfamiliarity with the Parsi community's religion, tradition and vocabulary: the glossary I didn't need while reading [b:A Fine Balance|5211|A Fine Balance|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518291s/5211.jpg|865827] would have been invaluable here.
The selfish Coomy is a wonderful villan almost literally hoist by her own petard, and the history of her step-father's relationships is nicely revealed as the main story of his decline is told. Yezad's response to the problems his family face is credible and there is hope that things may change for the better at the end of the book.
My only difficulty with this, as with [b:Swimming Lessons|19659|Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167274859s/19659.jpg|814396] was my unfamiliarity with the Parsi community's religion, tradition and vocabulary: the glossary I didn't need while reading [b:A Fine Balance|5211|A Fine Balance|Rohinton Mistry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165518291s/5211.jpg|865827] would have been invaluable here.
Rohinton Mistry takes us right into the life of a family in this book, a family with all its
conflicts, its misunderstandings, its jealousies, and unexpected moments of redeeming love. India, his setting, seems to make
everything feel bigger and more important, both hopeless and hopeful.
Nariman is an old man who has experienced much sadness and pain in his life. He lives with his stepchildren, Jal
and Coomy, who try without much success to protect him from the world. His natural daughter, Roxana, lives with her
husband and two sons apart from her father. The lives of all the family, however, are intricately bound together.
The title, Family Matters, is wonderful, with its dual meanings of both family concerns and the importance of family.
There are no simple answers in this story. Plans, even clever plans, go awry. Good acts are not rewarded. Out of good
intentions come undeserved troubles. Despite our best efforts to stop wickedness, people continue to do the wrong things.
Moments of peace in this confusing world---acts of genuine compassion, a little laughter, a little music---are rare, but
provide us with just enough hope to continue to slog on.
Mistry is a gifted writer, excellent at writing dialogue with edgy comedy, with a whiff of hysteria, and at creating
plots that twist and turn unexpectedly, like life itself.
Recommended.
conflicts, its misunderstandings, its jealousies, and unexpected moments of redeeming love. India, his setting, seems to make
everything feel bigger and more important, both hopeless and hopeful.
Nariman is an old man who has experienced much sadness and pain in his life. He lives with his stepchildren, Jal
and Coomy, who try without much success to protect him from the world. His natural daughter, Roxana, lives with her
husband and two sons apart from her father. The lives of all the family, however, are intricately bound together.
The title, Family Matters, is wonderful, with its dual meanings of both family concerns and the importance of family.
There are no simple answers in this story. Plans, even clever plans, go awry. Good acts are not rewarded. Out of good
intentions come undeserved troubles. Despite our best efforts to stop wickedness, people continue to do the wrong things.
Moments of peace in this confusing world---acts of genuine compassion, a little laughter, a little music---are rare, but
provide us with just enough hope to continue to slog on.
Mistry is a gifted writer, excellent at writing dialogue with edgy comedy, with a whiff of hysteria, and at creating
plots that twist and turn unexpectedly, like life itself.
Recommended.
I'm hard pressed to put into words why I liked this book so much. Maybe it was just that reading it really transported me to Bombay, to childhood, to a time in the future, and to places I'll never go.
Rohinton Mistry is like Pamuk, in that, he is a precious historian in the garb of a story-teller. Yes their stories are fictitious, but they record for posterity a snapshot of society, or a city, sometimes both. Like this gem from Mistry, chronicling the city, the times, and the parsi culture struggling to survive the odds, but above all very "human" drama of loving and hating people you live with, that's in a way transcends time and place (just like Mevlut's story in Pamuk's book).
Family Matters is a story of an extended parsi family, over three generations, mostly centered around an aged Nariman Vakeel, rapidly losing his battle with Parkinson's disease, and his condition, and responsibility of it opening up old scars in the family, as the surface is scratched. The setting is Bombay (just waiting to turn Mumbai?) of 1990s.
Just like Mr. Kapur, the employer of Nariman's son-in-law, Yezad, is obsessed with chronicling the city through rare old photographs, Mistry creates a fascinatingly stitched panaroma of Mumbai life, as always, and specifically of the life of it's parsi community, with it's panchayat, fire-temple, the low intensity war between the conservatives and the liberals, and the struggle to hold on to/break out of the parsi identity, and also the universal forces of pain, longing, love, despair that play in the background, making it easy to identify with the characters as they struggle to cope with their small/big problems.
One very interesting sub-plot is the transformation of Yezad, a once proud cosmopolitan Bombayite, into a religious conservative, as he loses the struggles of life, and takes umbrage to his religion and a hardened identity, just as his father-in-law stays adamantly opposed to it even through his dying moments . Endlessly heartbreaking, as always, Mistry does try to introduce a few silver-linings, but in Mistry's worlds ever silver-linings are kind of depressingly sullen. And yet, I can never put down a Mistry book, because there is always redemption knowing on the door, in one form or the other.
Family Matters is a story of an extended parsi family, over three generations, mostly centered around an aged Nariman Vakeel, rapidly losing his battle with Parkinson's disease, and his condition, and responsibility of it opening up old scars in the family, as the surface is scratched. The setting is Bombay (just waiting to turn Mumbai?) of 1990s.
Just like Mr. Kapur, the employer of Nariman's son-in-law, Yezad, is obsessed with chronicling the city through rare old photographs, Mistry creates a fascinatingly stitched panaroma of Mumbai life, as always, and specifically of the life of it's parsi community, with it's panchayat, fire-temple, the low intensity war between the conservatives and the liberals, and the struggle to hold on to/break out of the parsi identity, and also the universal forces of pain, longing, love, despair that play in the background, making it easy to identify with the characters as they struggle to cope with their small/big problems.
One very interesting sub-plot is the