Family Matters

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional
Review: Family Matters, at its core, is a story about family. The family at the center of the novel are the Chenoys, with parents Yezad and Roxana and children Jehangir and Murad. The story revolves around the effects of the Chenoy's extended family (Aunt Coomy, Uncle Jal and Grandfather Nariman)upon the Chenoys. At the story's heart is the injury of Nariman, and how Jal and Coomy feel they cannot take care of him, and pawn him off to the Chenoys who have tight finances and a two-room flat. Interwoven are vignettes about Nariman's girlfriend Lucy; his wife and Jal, Coomy, and Roxana's mother Yasmin; Yezad's boss at work; and the Chenoy family's neignbors. These vignettes serve to further our knowledge of the different characters. The result is a novel where one feels as if they know the characters intimately, their weaknesses, their strengths, and their desires. Family Matters is a novel everyone can relate to. Everyone has had money problems, everyone has had problems with their relatives. Mistry manages to distill the experience of being a part of a family into a very well-written novel.

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointing, but still worthwhile
Review: I had been waiting to read this book for months, and was excited when it came out in paperback. "A Fine Balance" singlehandedly made Mistry one of my favorite authors of all time. But I came away from this book slightly disappointed.

While Mistry in "A Fine Balance" created vivid, wonderful, and bizarre characters a la Charles Dickens, here the characters seem one-dimensional and stilted. There is not a lot of change and growth here, so much so that at the end of the book I was left wondering what the point of the whole novel was. The title is a giveaway to the theme, but the characters never did live up to it. Family, in the end, didn't matter anymore than in the beginning. Also, the physical descriptions of the bedridden father were less than pleasing to visualize. Sometimes they made me downright queasy. While making the book less attractive, it did have the effect of reiterating just how difficult of a position the characters who had to take care of him were. Still, I could have done without the gross-out factor. Finally, I am not familiar with Indian religions, and they are gone into in some detail in this book, which made me quite confused. A basic grasp of some Indian terms would be extremely useful here.

There were parts of this book that made it worth while. Mistry is at his best when he writes about tragedy, and this book certainly has its share. There are some memorable characters, I only wish they would have been developed more thoroughly. But the book still lacks the raw emotion so evident in "A Fine Balance."

Bottom Line: If you are looking to read Mistry, read "A Fine Balance." While "Family Matters" will satisfy Mistry fans, I doubt it will succeed in creating new ones.

Rating:
Summary: Disliked it
Review: I have to finish this book by the end of March break and do a presentation on it in my grade 11 English class about how good this book is...we will sure have to think of some big fat lies.

The book sounds more interesting than it actually is, I was EXTREMELY grossed out by things the author goes into way too much detail to describe someone taking a poop, random sexual comments, a 13 year old boy suggesting that his mommy drinks some liquor I don't understand why, and very politics oriented. I found it extremely difficult to pronounce the character's names and they would associate things with Indian names like well this thing is like the (Indian name here that you do not understand). This book definately needed a dictionary at the back because a lot of times I had to go and read a paragraph a couple of times to try to figure out what it meant.

If you get grossed out easily or are offended by minor sexual content then you should definately not read this book also if you are not into politics or understand nothing about Indian culture or words, this book could be a real challenge. There were some good things about it I just don't know which exactly.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Passages
Review: I lept right to _Family Matters_ after finishing _A Fine Balance_. I had so enjoyed meeting Mistry's characters in the latter work that I need more.

_Family Matters_ delivered for me. Mistry is able to expose his characters without direct description - we find the heart and soul of Jal, Coomy, Roxana and Chenoy just via their interactions.

It's been a long time since I marked passages in a book in order to read them aloud to others; in this work, I marked 5. My favourite is the description of Roxana watching her son feed his grandfather. I believe that some of the most memorable moments in our lives are the simple, quiet moments of beauty, much as Roxana felt while hanging her laundry.

Unlike Balance, Family Matters left me with a feeling of peace. That doesn't mean this work is better or worse; just sufficiently different from A Fine Balance.

I suggest that readers tackle A Fine Balance first, then delve into Family Matters.

Rating:
Summary: Universal family drama
Review: I read Rohinton Mistry's "Family Matters" over Thanksgiving, and could not put it down. As anyone who has read any of Mistry's novels knows, they are not gripping thrillers or cliffhanging adventures, and this book is no exception. It is a finely-wrought study of character, family and society, intimate yet epic in its scope. Other reviewers have provided plot summaries, so I will not do so. In any case, plot for Mistry seems almost beside the point: it is simply a device to explore human emotion and behavior, and its interaction with society, from personal relations through family, religious and ethnic community, social class, city, country and humanity as a whole. Mistry gets to the universal through the personal, and uses his own Parsi religion and culture as the medium.

A few words of the little I know about the Parsi community (with apologies for any errors): It is descended from the Persians (Iranians) that chose exile rather than submit to forced conversion to Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries. They found refuge in India, and their monotheistic religion has endured for millenia. The very reason for the Parsis' survival is their insularity, the fierce devotion to their identity and prohibition of marriage outside the community. The insularity also provides many, if not most of the personal dilemmas and tragedies in the book: forbidden love, catastrophically mismatched arranged marriages, impossibly high expectations for children, the need to uphold the community's reputation for honesty and integrity, the contradiction between Parsis' progressive ideals and the inherent bigotry of refusing to mix with others. The elegiac quality of the writing, its sense of loss is largely due to the final result of the community's insularity: a catastrophically low birth rate, and fears of the community's extinction in a few decades. The rest of the sense of loss comes from the memory of a more tolerant, enlightened Bombay where communities mixed, tensely but vibrantly, before "Hindu nationalism" took root, a memory that forms a large part of Salman Rushdie's fiction too.

Some reviewers criticize the sub-plot about Shiv Sena goons, members of a bigoted, extremist Hindu nationalist movement, as contrived and unbelievable. The devious scheme of Coomi and Jal to escape their filial responsibilities by destroying their apartment's ceiling is also dismissed as unrealistic. I would respond by saying that anyone who has not lived with bigotry, communal divisions and violence, stifling careers, suffocating families, poverty, and absurd rent-control rules in a corrupt, teeming city should at least try to imagine these conditions. I have only experienced a fraction of these conditions growing up in Greece, and the schemes ring very true.

Let me end with a few general comments. The Indian subcontinent has produced large numbers of wonderful fiction writers in English (there are far more writing in the major Indian languages I am told, but they are unfortunately inaccessible to most of us), and their ranks keep swelling with newer generations all the time. In terms of scope, type, characterization, technique, etc. they are all over the map. Compared, say, with the magical realism and wild, extravagant invention of Salman Rushdie, Mistry's fiction seems spare and very old-fashioned. It fits much more into the tradition of great 19th century realist novels, from Gogol and Tolstoy to Dickens and Trollope, but more like Gogol, I'd say: the combination of vivid characterization, precise prose, and universal themes through the seemingly mundane adventures of ordinary people and families following a tragic arc. It is great literature. It is also proof that the realist novel is alive and kicking, and can keep at least some of us obsessively turning the page.

Rating:
Summary: Too contrived
Review: I was looking forward to this book as I consider A Fine Balance one of the best books I read during the 90's. I largely agree with the other reviewers' praise of Mistry's fine character development and the story of Nariman's decline and the burdens this places upon his family is certainly poignant.My main problem with this book is the absurdity of the situations Mistry places his characters in which are far too contrived. Indeed, the silly way that Yezad sets up his boss had me literally tossing the book across the room. Ridiculous too, was Jal and Coomy destroying the ceiling of their apartment to keep their father from returning and the nonsensical handyman neighbor they invited in to 'repair' it. Also, their agreeing to have someone they knew was incompetent replace a structural support just didn't ring true.
I cautiously recommend this book for the vividness of most of the characters and the insight it provides into the relgious divisions within India and to the meagerness of even middle class life. But you will not get lost in this book because the plot will keep reminding you that you are reading a work of fiction and not peering into real lives.

Rating:
Summary: Wow! What else can I say?
Review: If you are looking for a contemporary novel that can give you a broad, sweeping look at the human condition, this is it. And what better a proxy for the human condition than "Family Matters?" The Indian/Parsi setting and cast of characters in the book are incidental for Mistry's fiction translates to all countries, cultures, languages and peoples. Once you read the book, do check out the following reader's guide which poses a number of interesting questions about the book and I am sure your thinking them over will greatly enhance the pleasure.

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Rating:
Summary: Life is challenging
Review: In this latest masterpiece from one of the greatest authors of our times, Mr mistry narrates the story of a middle class family. And believe me coming from India, and having lived in Bombay for a very long period of time, the description of the flat and its neighbours are so real.... can it ever get more real than this.

As I read the book i felt thankful for having all that i have in life,. cos the family in this books is just one example of millions and millions of families who live in this great city called Bombay or mumbai. And its only a great author like mistry who can give such detailed nitty gritties of life.

Life is Bombay is a challenge and thats what this book is all about.

Rating:
Summary: Good but no Fine Balance
Review: interesting issues are dealt with in this book. The process of aging, the hints of Alzheimers, the relationship between all family members when an elder becomes ill. The family dynamics on both sides of the grandfather's family are full of emotion, anger, even betrayal i would say. I was expecting it to be on the same level as A Fine Balance but it is slightly less. However, i would still recommend it as Mistry is one of my top 10 authors.

Rating:
Summary: Poignant and imagistic
Review: Like many of his works, Mistry paints a picture of an "ordinary" Parsi character, interacting with the diversity of people that is Bombay, dealing with aging and Parkinson's, and his own personal history. The photo on the cover is especially poignant. Ironically, it's a photo by acclaimed screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala; the same photo used on her beautiful coffee table book on Parsi Zoroastrians, PARSIS: THE ZOROASTRIANS OF INDIA- A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY. Clearly, Mistry was onto something when he used this photo for his book (he's said to have personally picked it) to create a visual image of his story inside.