Man Booker Prize 2002

Longlist

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Family Matters
Rohinton Mistry

Irene Miller

Set in modern Bombay, Family Matters follows only a few months in a family's life. Nariman Vakeel, the grandfather, is a man suffering from Parkinson's Disease, and the bitterness of his two step-children. Determined to live a normal life, and against their advice, he goes for a short walk and breaks his ankle.

His accident starts a chain of events which lead the family to fall apart. Being infirm, he needs constant attention, but his step-daughter, Coomy, rejects him. Blaming him for her mother's death, she refuses to care for him. Sickened by the reality of caring for an old man, she manipulates her situation, and her brother, in order to rid themselves of him. She orders an ambulance and puts him in it.

Without warning, he is pushed into the hands of his blood-daughter, Roxana, who shares a one-bedroom flat with her husband and two sons. Although willing to take Nariman on, they are unable to cope with him, and the burden begins to take its toll on the family. Driven to distraction by the claustrophobic atmosphere and the lack of funds, Roxana's husband turns to betting, fraud and finally God as a pragmatic means of getting away from it all.

The story is one showing the present combined with one obsessed with the past: Nariman's preoccupation with his long-lost love, Coomy's with her mother's death, and an India preoccupied by its romanticised past. All these combine to show a self-destructive side of modern life. The pettiness of family life dominates throughout - who will pay for Nariman's medication, who should care for him? These questions take over a family who were previously happy to keep matters swept under the carpet. Bringing these issues into the open leads to a self-centredness which ultimately leads to tragedy.

The book is centred almost entirely around this very small family, and there is little opportunity for its members to seek help outside. You feel their isolation and their desperation to keep things together, while they steadfastly refuse to compromise with each other. There is an overwhelming sense of family being all that exists, and yet it is clearly not enough. Members of the family gain their status in life through their role in the family set-up, yet feel great disappointment at the reality of the relationships.

Family Matters is a beautifully-written book. It is slow-moving, and charming. It succeeds in encouraging the reader into its web, provoking sadness and anger. For a novel so dominated by failure and weakness, there is a great deal of humour. Mistry describes an India which finds modern morality difficult to combine with the traditions of the past, and shows how these contradictions work their way down into individual relationships. Family Matters is a deeply moving novel and a heart-breaking description of a family torn apart from within.