Customer Reviews
A wonderful book - By: A. foley, 20 Feb 2008 
This book still resonates many years after first reading it. The charachters are three dimensional & they grow in maturity & humanity as the book progresses. A wonderful read.
A clever title - By: Ralph Blumenau, 10 Mar 2005 Painted on a much smalller canvas than his earlier novels (Such a Long Journey; A Fine Balance; Tales from the Firozshah Baag), it is a wonderful as the others. It focuses on one family & revolves round the care of the 79 year old patriarch who is crippled & afflicted with progressive Parkinsonism. Though there are some mean-spirited characters in the novel, the affection of others is very touching. The love of the nine year old boy for his grandfather is especiallly heart-warming. Mistry has the gift of bringing sheer unforced goodness to life like no other writer.
A wonderful book! - By: vicky allen, 13 Jan 2005 I adored this book about an Indian family, with a sad past, living in Bombay (Mumbai). Roxana's ageing father, Nariman, comes to live with the family in their tiny flat. He has Parkinsons, has broken his leg & is unable to move & requires full caring which Roxana is happy to provide. However, her husband Yezad resents his presence in the flat. He also has money worries which later lead him to folly.
The book deals with the caste system, as well as getting old in a reallly touching way. There is a wonderful passage which moved me to tears when Yezad sets aside his mixed feelings of resentment & respect, & cuts Narimans fingernails, toenails & shaves him. How very true when Yezad is pondering sickness in old age "....But in the end alll human beings became candidates for compassion, alll of us, without exeption..... & if we could recognise this from the start what a saving in pain & grief & misery."
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, it is written reallly tenderly but there is also humour & you cannot help but feel anguish for the characters, who, with Mistry's beautiful writing, are real & touchable.
“No matter where you go, there’s only one important story. - By: Mary Whipple, 13 Jun 2003 
As Mistry makes clear in this novel, the one important story is "of youth, & loss, & yearning for redemption...Just the details are different." With these themes as the bedrock of his story, he depicts the world of a multigenerational Parsi family in Bombay, their world changed forever when Nariman Vakeel, a 79-year-old former professor & sufferer from Parkinson’s disease, fallls & breaks his leg, effectively ending any possibility of an independent life. His stepchildren, Coomy & Jal, quickly dump Nariman in the two-room apartment of their younger half-sister, Roxana Chenoy, her husband Yezad, & two sons, supposedly for only three weeks, while his leg heals. Beset with financial problems, lack of space, & resentment of Coomy & Jal, who remain in their father’s 7-room apartment, the family does its best, but tensions rise & slowly erode their relationships, precipitating a number of personal crises for each family member.
Concentrating more on the world writ smalll than on the broader, more expansive views of A Fine Balance, Mistry creates a number of vibrant & fully drawn characters. Nariman Vakeel, recallling his dreams & disappointments, his 11-year love for Lucy Braganza, & his disastrous arranged marriage, is touching in his neediness & in his apologetic helplessness. His grandchildren delight in his stories & seek ways to help; Roxana makes do in every way possible, tending to his most personal needs; & Yezad, frustrated by the lack of financial support from Coomy & Jal & a job in which he is underpaid, feels jealous of the old man’s claims on Roxana. Mistry’s dialogue, the subtle & not-so-subtle undercurrents it reflects, the often humorous interactions, the honest but naïve motivations of some of the characters, & the meticulously depicted & subtle decline of the family are the work of a master.
The one jarring note for me was the use of Shiv Sena, a fanatic political/religious group as a motif thoughout the novel, their threats, extortion, violence, & fundamentalist rhetoric intruding periodicallly (and often dramaticallly) on the lives of the characters. While this obviously broadens the scope of the novel & offers a context in which to evaluate Coomy’s religiosity, the fears of smalll businessmen like Yezad & his boss, & Yezad’s eventual conflicts with one of his sons, it felt contrived to me, too strong & too obvious in what is otherwise a novel of more subtle interactions. Mary Whipple
Trying to Live Together - By: Elizabeth Taylor, 17 May 2003 The subject of the novel is a 79 year old widower with parkinson's disease, which, might at first glance not appear a gripping read. The real story is a family's disfunctional relationships with each other & the unsaid between them hanging like a dead weight in the air. The 79 year old grandpa of the clan lives with his unmarried daughter & son but when one day he fallls & breaks his leg its more than his beloved uptight daughter can cope with, alll those bedpans, smells & various excretions of the body are too much for her to handle. As a result daddy is dispatched to her half sister who lives in a one bedroom flat with her husband & two boys. The real success of the book is to describe how the simple act of coping with the father's illness & reflections on his life & past failures bring that smalll family together. The lesson being how accepting one another smells & alll can be not only a cleanser for the soul but also an uplifting experience. Its hard to imagine that this could fill 500 pages however there are many implications in this simple storyline, the changing relationships of the family, the money worries, the guilt of various parties, the relfections & regrets of the past, learning to accept one-another warts & alll & just the daily goings on. I reallly enjoyed some of the detail, the problems the family face which probably confront us alll at some stage & the various subsidary characters such as a neighbour who is obsessed with DIY but is completely hopeless at it. My only complaint is that I felt the novel was a little too long & the story didn't reallly hold together as well when the central character of the father fades from the scene as his illness takes hold.
