SOURCE: Heinegg, Peter. “Wandering Between Two (?) Worlds.” America 188, no. 8 (10 March 2003): 30-2.

In the following review, Heinegg judges Family Matters as a novel that combines a grand scope with paying attention to meticulous details.

In Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855) Matthew Arnold famously agonized over being caught between two conflicting worlds: a beloved, but dead faith and whatever unknown, but no doubt chilling, forces that would replace it. Compared with the complex predicaments facing Yezad Chenoy and other characters in this splendid new novel by Rohinton Mistry, Arnold's dilemma was a piece of cake.

Mistry himself is a Parsi, born in Bombay 50 years ago, but domiciled in Toronto since 1975. The Parsi extended family whose fortunes he recounts [in Family Matters] is nominally headed by a gentle, retired, widowed professor, Nariman Vakeel, 79 years old and suffering from Parkinson's disease. The great love of his life was a Christian from Goa...