Family matters

Family Matters is a novel by the Indian-born writer Rohinton Mistry, published in 2002 and set in Bombay in the 1990s.

Nariman is a Parsi widower with a long memory, and the book is built around the question of who will look after him. His stepdaughter Coomy has managed his life with a set of rules that keep him at a distance, and when he breaks his ankle she arranges for him to be moved to her half sister's crowded flat, where two boys are already sharing a room. Roxana's husband Yezad is a proud man running out of money, and the pressure of another patient in the house drives him into a scheme he cannot justify even to himself. Around them Mistry draws the city, the housing society, the Parsi community and the politics of the period. The novel is long and patient, and it takes its time over the arrangements a household invents for an invalid.

It was the author's third novel, and it followed A Fine Balance, which had brought him a wide readership in Britain and North America.