Family Ties

Tales of the Catholic, English-speaking denizens of an Indian suburb.

WHAT YOU CALL WINTER

Stories

By Nalini Jones

Knopf. 251 pp. $22.95

Nalini Jones's tender portraits of Catholic, English-speaking Indians living in Santa Clara, an affluent suburb of Mumbai, are so vividly rendered that you can practically smell the frying oil laced with masala and onions. Like Chekhov -- and this young writer is good enough to merit the comparison -- Jones has faith in details. She knows that a stained dress hidden in the garbage or a burnt pan stubbornly reused reveal more than would explanations from an omniscient narrator.

Nine stories pinpoint crucial moments, starting in the 1950s, in the lives of four interconnected families on St. Hilary Road. Their world is changing: Houses passed down for generations are being demolished to build high-rise apartments; children go abroad, marry foreigners and return only for visits. Tensions between siblings who leave and those who stay are examined in two of the best stories. Toby seethes when listening to the house maintenance advice of his bossy brother Michael, who is only "Home for a Short Time." Expatriate Colleen and stay-at-home Bianca find their affection strained by the straitjacketing expectations of their mother, Grace, who sees them respectively as "The Bold, the Beautiful" -- a convenient way for Grace to avoid acknowledging Colleen's lesbianism. In the title story, unnerving glimpses of his father's ghost help elderly Roddy make peace with the past, agree to sell his house and plan to visit his son overseas.

Despite the familial frustrations that Jones sensitively examines, these residents of St. Hilary Road are enfolded in a comforting community. "Half the Story," the only piece not set in Santa Clara, poignantly explores the enduring sorrow felt in the absence of that community. "Some essential part of her was out of reach," thinks Marian. She loves her American husband and daughters, but "she was not fully seen, she was not understood." Yet four stories about Marian's Indian family remind us that communities harbor cruelty as well. Marian's mother, Essie, is a particularly scary figure, adamantly refusing to hear her son's pleas for rescue from a boarding school where he is being abused in "We Think of You Every Day" and unjustly punishing her Hindu gatekeeper's grandson in "This Is Your Home Also."

Even Essie has her reasons, Jones show us. In each story, she enters her characters' hearts and minds so that readers may directly experience their conflicts, confusion, hopes and fears. Underneath these particulars, skillfully arranged to help us toward quiet truths, we always sense the organizing intelligence and compassion of an author who invites us to understand rather than to judge. ¿

Wendy Smith is the author of "Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940."