Mistry's "Swimming Lessons" is the concluding story of Tales from Firozsha Baag, the collection that first brought him critical attention, but most commentators initially ignored this particular story. Writing in Canadian Literature, Amin Malak, for example, chose to discuss "Squatter" and "Lend Me Your Light," presumably to showcase both the Parsi Indian and Canadian immigrant elements of Mistry's work. But he never mentions the last story. He does make flattering literary comparisons to Mistry's work that later reviewers echo. He writes that "following the models of psychological realism set by Chekhov and Joyce, Mistry reveals a knack for generating humour in the midst of tragedy," and concludes that he "adroitly blends tragedy with irony, cynicism with humour, skepticism with belief."

When the collection was reprinted in the United States in 1989, two years after its Canadian debut, it was reviewed twice in the New York Times, first...