Family Matters is a finely wrought account of life among middle-class Parsees in contemporary India. The novel is about the decline of Nariman Vakeel, an old man sharing his Bombay flat with his hectoring stepdaughter and feckless stepson. Battered by age and ever-worsening Parkinson's disease, Vakeel is a virtual prisoner of an unhappy family home. He yearns for nothing so much as a good long walk. His daughter Roxana's birthday gift of a walking cane is his key to freedom. But on his first outing, Vakeel tumbles into a ditch and breaks an ankle. Now a bedridden invalid, he is totally dependent on his bitter stepdaughter, Coomy, who holds him responsible for her mother's death.

Shackled to the bed, Vakeel's mind constantly moves from the present to the past. In his youth, Vakeel had succumbed to his parents' prejudices and did not marry the love of his life. (She was not Parsi.) Instead, he married a young widow with two children and fathered a daughter with her. Despite his kind intentions, the lives of both women were ruined.

The novel takes its strength from the haunted memories of Nariman Vakeel and the conspiracy of his stepchildren Coomie and Jal to relocate him to the home of their half-sister Roxana. Simmering resentment and a deliberate conspiracy by Coomie leads Vakeel to live in an overcrowded apartment with his daughter, her husband Yezad and her sons Murad and Jehinger.

The arrival of the old man to an already overcrowded apartment creates ripples and unsettles everyone in Roxana's family. The entire novel is set in Mumbai and the poverty and despair of the city are as palpable as a stench as Roxana and her family struggle to accommodate the old man in their tiny apartment. All around them are signs of chaos, religious fanaticism, greed and corruption. While Roxana and Yezad are buffeted by events outside their family circle, Nariman Vakeel's tortured memories continue to dominate. Although the world portrayed by Mistry is to some extent bleak, there are flashes of love loyalty and warmth that accounts for much of the novel's popularity.

Despite the topicality of the novel's setting, the themes are universal, and the action of Mistry's characters endearingly, if tragically, human.

This is a book about love and hate among people who understand and misunderstand each other with a vengeance. They work overtime to give each other pain. Yet, in the end, each life is meaningless without the others. Family, as the book's title suggests, matters.

A splendid book which captures the essence of Mumbai, Mistry style, this novel is a must read for all those who believe in the ordinary splendidness of human relationships.

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