المشاركة الأصلية كتبت بواسطة eight-bits of Coffee

Set during the 1990s in an overcrowded and politically corrupt Bombay, Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters depicts a family being torn apart by lies, love, and its unresolved demons of the past. Nariman Vakeel is an aging patriarch whose advancing Parkinson's disease and its related complications threaten to destroy his large Parsi family. When Nariman breaks his ankle and becomes bedridden, his two stepchildren turn his care over to their half-sister, Roxanne, who lives in a two-room flat with her husband and two sons. What follows is each character's reaction to this situation, from Roxanne's husband's struggle to provide for his family without neglecting his conscience to their sons' coming of age in an era of uncertainty. Expertly interspersed between these dilemmas are Nariman's tortured remembrances of a forbidden love and its inescapable consequences

Gentle humor leavens the weightier themes of trust, religion and second chances in this satisfying sequel to The Monk Downstairs (2002). Tough-as-nails divorcée Rebecca Martin eases into married life with former monk and tenant Mike Christopher while she wonders just what they've gotten themselves into. Her pot-smoking ex-husband is trying to reform and be a responsible father, but his inability to follow through adds extra tension to Rebecca and Mike's newlywed life. Farrington beautifully renders the touching relationships between Mike and his young stepdaughter, Mary Martha, and his mother-in-law, Phoebe, whose mental acuity is steadily declining after a stroke in the previous novel. Mike's struggle to reconcile his contemplative nature with his new responsibilities (and Rebecca's disdain for religion) is engagingly portrayed as escapes to the attic to meditate. When Mary Martha decides she wants to attend mass with Mike, Rebecca's conflicts intensify; "It wasn't that she was opposed to God, per se. She just didn't want His damn church screwing with her daughter's head." Farrington has a knack for unusual descriptions, such as mid-week morning mass, a "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am affair, like framing work in carpentry.... They left the interior decoration and finish work for Sundays."