In some ways, I would consider Lila De a lucky woman. She’s an editor at a rising publishing house in New York. (I would love to have this job, if I couldn’t be a librarian.) She makes enough to afford her own apartment in one of the most expensive cities in the world. On the other hand, she’s less lucky in love and downright unlucky when it comes to some members of her family. Lila’s sudden inheritance of her grandfather’s house in Kolkata—where many of the members of her mother’s family live—turns out to be as much good luck as it is bad. The Magnificent Ruins, by Nayantara Roy, follows Lila as she wrestles with literal and metaphorical inheritances, good and bad love, and the past and the future of her very messy family.
The Lahiri house is in bad shape when Lila arrives in Kolkata. Nothing has been modernized or even repaired for a long time. But the condition of the house is secondary to the turmoil of feelings Lila experiences when she sees her mother, uncles, grandmother, and other relatives after so long away. Distance was Lila’s best defense against getting sucked into her mother’s drama (I suspect a personality disorder here) and the pettiness of her spoiled relatives. (Her uncles have never worked. They live off of the interest from the Lahiri trust, which was set up decades ago when the family was much richer.) She loves the Lahiris but they drive her insane.
Because Lila is a fixer, she meets with lawyers and contractors to try and restore the Lahiri house to something approaching its former glory. And because the Lahiris are who they are, they interfere constantly. Even more lawyers are involved. Fights are had. A wedding is held. A lover drops in at the worst time. And, along the way, a lot of secrets about the family are spilled. Reading this book made me feel like a fly on the wall, overhearing things that the Lahiris really don’t want other people to know. The gossip is delicious but, after a while, I kind of felt like I needed a bit of therapy to deal with the emotional backwash. I realize this sounds bad but I really appreciated learning from Lila’s attempts to understand her difficult family members. She has a bigger heart than I do.
Readers who are fascinated by family drama will find a lot to enjoy in The Magnificent Ruins.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.