Despite his tremors, Nariman likes to go walking. When he falls into a hole dug  by the telephone company and breaks his ankle, Jal and Coomy cannot cope with the stress and indignity of nursing him. Coomy in particular still resents Nariman for his treatment of their mother, and decides to foist the old man on to his next of  kin  for the duration of his convalescence. Nariman's daughter Roxana,  though,  lives  in  a much smaller flat with her husband Yezad and her two sons. The names of  the two blocks attest to different classes of dwelling: the faded grandeur of Chateau Felicity as against the modest pretensions of Pleasant Villa.

Conditions are so cramped that the older boy, 13-year-old Murad, has to  move  his mattress on to the balcony under an improvised awning, though luckily  he  regards this hardship  as  an  adventure.  The nine-year-old,  Jehangir,  sleeps  next  to  his grandfather, and comforts him when he becomes agitated  in  the  night.  Nariman's dreams are of Lucy, the non-Parsi woman whom he loved but  was  prohibited  from marrying by the orthodoxy of his family. Instead he married a  suitable widow, doing the right thing and thereby destroying both women's lives.

Roxana is devout and sweet-natured, her husband,  no  longer  a  practising  Parsi, short-tempered and prone to stress. Both are  tested  by  the  demands  of  looking after   Nariman,   whose  patience  and  humour  can't  alleviate  the  burden  of  his presence, and the expense of his medication.

His stay becomes indefinite when the ceilings of Nariman's flat collapse. In fact  Jal and Coomy have sabotaged their own residence, pretending there  was  a  flood,  to make sure he wouldn't return. Technically  the  flat  is  theirs - in  his  guilt  he  has made it over to them - so he is altogether at the mercy of his family. As he  ruefully remarks, he has taught King Lear often enough, without really learning the  lessons of the play.

Nariman is saturated in English literature: one passage shows that he has  read  at least  the  opening  pages  of  Ulysses,  when he mentally  rewrites  some  famous phrases    (snotgreen   sea,   scrotumtightening   sea)   to   console  himself  for  a nose-blowing mishap while Jal and Coomy are helping  him  wash:   'The  seagreen snot,' he thinks, 'the nosetightening snot.' Rohinton Mistry's style, though, is  firmly rooted in the nineteenth century. With its occasional resort to  stale  Latinisms  ('to effect  an  evacuation', ' vesperal routine',  'hebdomadal get-together')  it  sometimes inadvertently recalls the late chapter of Ulysses, 'Eumaeus',  written  to  mimic  the cliches of exhaustion.

Do families reflect society at large, or do they act as barricades against it? 
The evidence on show in Family Matters could support either thesis,  until  the  plot shows its hand.

The book's minor characters are often doctrinaire  in  their  diagnoses:  'Little  white lies are as pernicious as big black lies.  When  they mix together, a great greyness of ambiguity descends, society is cast adrift in an amoral sea... ' 
The most persuasive passages linking public and private show  a  subtler  seepage. Money worries lead Yezad to the  illegal  lottery,  the  Matka,  where  he  makes  a modest  win  and  then  a  massive  loss.   Jehangir's  teacher  appoints  him  as  a homework monitor, explaining that the classroom as a microcosm of society needs an incorruptible police and judiciary.   He's  proud  and  flattered,  but  doesn't  long resist the temptation of a bribe.

A family that belongs to a racial religion  is  certainly  some  sort  of  special  case. 
There    is   plenty    of    anthropological    information    in  Family  Matters  about 
Zoroastrianism - rituals of sandalwood and brazier, quirky beliefs about the  cosmic 
significance of the cat, the cock and  the  spider.   The  most  engaging  pages  are 
those where elderly Parsis, resigned  to  the  decline  of  the  sect  which  'built this 
beautiful  city  and  made  it  prosper',   discuss  fantastical  remedies  for  the  low 
birthrate.    Since   educated  people  have  smaller  families,  one  proposes  cash 
incentives for Parsis to study less.

No postgraduates to get funding without a contract to beget  as  many  children  as there are people  over  fifty  in  their  families  is  one  suggestion.   Another,  which assumes  the  extinction  of  a  venerable  cult,  is  to  bury  a  Parsi  time-capsule, containing    among    other    things    'recipes    for    dhansak,    patra-ni-macchi, marghi-na-farcha, and lagan-nu-custard'.

Not all of the book's characters are Parsis, but there's a sense that those  who  are enjoy a qualified exemption from the full chaos of Bombay. Yezad's employer is  an ecumenical Hindu, a 'born-and-bred Bombayvala' who  sees  himself  as  inoculated against attacks of outrage, but in his attempts to surrender  to  the  spirit of his city he experiences only intimidation and thuggery. A salesman at the Book  Mart  next door has a sideline as a scribe, reading and writing letters for the illiterate.  The  full misery of India breaks over him like a wave, with all its  paradoxical  accompanying dignity. One man, who has just heard of his brother's death - killed for a relationship across caste lines - refuses to have the reading fee waived, since it would cheapen the death to hear it for free.

In the short term, having to take in Nariman threatens to tear Roxana's family apart. But in the long term, living  up  to  their  responsibilities  transforms  not  only  their morals but their fortunes.  Yezad  rediscovers  his  lost religion, becoming a regular worshipper  at  the  fire-temple.  The story moves to a  close  on  a  surge  of  pious sentiment.   Every   writer   establishes   a   threshold   between  major  and  minor characters, significant and arbitrary fates, but it's perhaps a weakness of  the  book that this divide coincides with a sectarian one. The only real god in a novel, after all, dispenser of grace and penalty, is the author.

At a late stage Mistry thought better of his proposed epigraph: 'Each  happy  family is happy in its own way, but all unhappy families resemble one another.'  It  may be that he discovered he was not the first to invert Tolstoy's famous  formula  (Nabokov got there first, in Ada ), or he may have realised  that  the  book as  written  doesn't really support it. The oddest feature of Family Matters is its  epilogue,  more  U-turn than coda, set five years after the main action and narrated by 14-year-old Jehangir.

Yezad is now a Parsi fundamentalist and bigot, prepared to act against Murad, if he tries to date a non-Parsi, exactly as Nariman's family acted against him. Earlier on, Mistry   seemed  strangely  to   muffle  the  conflict  between  religion  as  Nariman experienced it,  enemy  of  joy,  killer  of impulse, and as Yezad rediscovered it, as bringer of peace and prosperity.  This  was  man aged by having Nariman lapse into Parkinsonian incoherence just as Yezad found  the  fulfilment  of  faith.  But  now  it seems that religion is a problem that must  be  addressed  all  over  again.  It's  not exactly that novelists are required to make a final statement about the great issues of life, but they do have an advantage over god - the ability to write another draft that focuses more sharply, rather than to tag on to the end of a manuscript what seems more like a recantation than a rounding off.