Such a Long Journey, by Rohinton Mistry

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Rohinton Mistry is truly one of the finest writers out there today. His prose is perfect, his sense of place and setting (in this case, Bombay) acute and sensitive, and his characters live, breathe, work, and play in fully fleshed out eccentricy, believability, and, what’s most impressive of all, likeability. He skillfully balances a number of themes—in this case, death, superstition, family life, politics, friendship, lust, and more—with everything interwoven and interconnected and, of course, interesting.

The main flaw of this book, though, is that it was his first; since writing it, he’s clearly come to master the formula a bit more, and it is indeed a formula he uses. His setting, Bombay, his characters, Parsis, his issues, family—all these are constants between this and his next work, Family Matters, and, unfortunately, Family Matters was the better book. It’s as if this one was a draft—a highly polished, highly skillful, highly enjoyable draft—for his subsequent books. If read in isolation, therefore, this is an excellent book and a stand-alone one. If read after reading Family Matters, though, it’s still an excellent book, just not, evidently, a stand-alone one.