ROHINTON MISTRY Family Matters ****

I started off loving this book. Then I got a bit bored. Then I had the chance to get stuck in again while on holiday and ended up loving it again.

It's 500-odd pages long and at times moves at a glacial pace, but this portrait of three generations of a Parsi family in Bombay is incredibly moving, truthful and affectionate.

Nariman is 79 as the book opens. A widower he lives with his unmarried stepson and stepdaughter in a huge flat. The stepdaughter, Coomy, resents him for ruining her mother's life. When the old man breaks his ankle she's delighted to dump him on her younger half-sister, Roxanne, her husband and two young sons in their tiny flat.

The pressure on the family is intense as they try and cope with looking after Nariman and trying to stretch the family budget to include him.

We see how each of the family members responds to the situation. The youngest boy, Jehangir, really likes sleeping next to his grandfather and lovingly interprets his needs and is really sad when the whole family moves back to the big flat and sells the small one.

Each of them is trying to do their best, trying to survive in a corrupt society and making compromises that sometimes shame them.

It's a measure of Rohinton Mistry's skill that you can identify so readily with these characters from a totally different culture and religion.