SOURCE: Allen, Brooke. “Loss and Endurance.” Atlantic 290, no. 2 (September 2002): 165-66.

In the following review of Family Matters, Allen charts the progress of Mistry's writing over the course of his career and commends him as a master of metaphor.

Rohinton Mistry is not a household name, but it should be. The fifty-year-old Toronto resident, originally from Bombay, has long been recognized as one of the best Indian writers; he ought to be considered simply one of the best writers, Indian or otherwise, now alive.

Mistry is not prolific, but his development has been swift and steady. His first book, Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag (1987), was a wryly humorous series of interlocking tales rather in the manner of his countryman R. K. Narayan, or at least identifiable as part of the same gentle fictional tradition. His second, Such a Long Journey (1991), remained anchored in the world of...