Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar

The Museum of Failures

An immersive story about family secrets and the power of forgiveness from the bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick Honor.
When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from her. Years later, he returns to Bombay, planning to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl—and to see his elderly mother again before it is too late. She is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life.
Struck with guilt for not realizing just how ill she had become, Remy devotes himself to helping her recover and return home. But one day in her apartment he comes upon an old photograph that demands explanation. As shocking family secrets surface, Remy finds himself reevaluating his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. Can Remy learn to forgive others for their human frailties, or is he too wedded to his sorrow and anger over his parents’ long-ago decisions?
Surprising, devastating, and ultimately a story of redemption and healing still possible between a mother and son, The Museum of Failures is a tour de force from one of our most elegant storytellers about the mixed bag of love and regret. It is also, above all, a much-needed reminder that forgiveness comes from empathy for others.

R E V I E W S:

Publishers Weekly [read...]

The Museum of Failures

Learning to love your homeland, even when it’s complicated

Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents. (Sept.)

Umrigar (Honor) returns with another rich and emotionally gripping story about familial love and the destructive power of secrets. Remy Wadia has returned from the U.S. to his hometown of Bombay for the first time since his father’s death three years earlier. Having arrived to adopt a baby from a pregnant teenager, Remy is shocked to learn that the mother-to-be is having second thoughts about giving up the child. Making matters worse, his elderly mother’s health has suddenly declined.

Remy, who has a turbulent relationship with her, is guilt-ridden for having left India to settle with his American wife in Ohio. Umrigar deftly explores the complexity of caring for an aging parent as Remy stretches himself thin trying to nurse his mother back to health. Meanwhile, he’s preoccupied by grief over his beloved father. After his mother begins to recover and comes back home from the hospital, Remy tries to forgive her for verbally abusing him as a child, until one morning when a photograph falls out of his mother’s prayer book, leading to a series of revelations about Remy’s parents that change his perceptions of both of them.

The story of family secrets takes on emotional resonance as Remy contends with his own anxieties about becoming a parent. Umrigar continues to impress.

Kirkus Reviews [read...]

A touching story.

An Indian man living in Ohio returns to Bombay for the first time since his beloved father’s death.

After struggling with infertility, Remy Wadia and his wife, Kathy, have a stroke of luck: a relative of one of Remy’s closest friends from childhood is pregnant and wants to give the baby up for adoption. Remy arrives in India to meet the young woman only to find she wants to keep her baby. That’s not the only disappointment waiting for him. His mother, with whom he has a thorny relationship, is in the hospital fighting for her life. These events rock Remy to his core, sending him into a tailspin of grief, bewilderment, nostalgia, displacement, and guilt.

At risk of losing his mother, Remy discovers a family secret that upends everything he thought he knew about her and his father, transforming the notion of the man he thought he was and wants to be. Being both at home—meaning Bombay, the city where he was born and raised—and away from home—meaning Columbus, the smaller city where he’s made a life for himself as an adult—is challenging, but it offers him the opportunity to unpack the revelations from the past as well as think about what he wants for his future. Umrigar knows how to tell a story. A former journalist and the author of nine previous novels, she creates interesting characters and complex relationships, builds thematic tension and narrative suspense, and delivers emotionally resonant moments at just the right pace.

The book isn’t perfect. The dialogue often feels pedantic, as do some of Remy’s internal soliloquies about the differences and parallels between the U.S. and India. But these shortcomings are a small price to pay for an otherwise rich, heartfelt novel.

This is a touching story about what it really means to grow up and into an authentic life.

Review posted online: June 21, 2023

Libary Journal [read...]

The Titles to Read in 2023

In The Museum of Failures (Algonquin), a novel of secrets and forgiveness by Thrity Umrigar, the main character returns to India to complete an adoption and see the elderly mother he has resented for years.

By Jessica Trotter; July 26, 2023

Booklist [read...]

The Museum of Failures

By Shoba Viswanathan

When Remy Wadia returns to Bombay from his home in Ohio to adopt a baby and visit his mother, he learns that the baby’s birth mother, Monaz, is rethinking her plan to give up her child for adoption, and discovers that his own mother, Shirin, has been hospitalized for pneumonia. These quick plot turns highlight life’s unpredictability, a theme that runs through the book. As Remy learns harsh truths about his parents’ choices and comes to understand how they determined the course of his life, he also gets an opportunity to define the man he wants to be. Remy’s fractured relationship with his ailing mother provides a strong story arc, and his complicated love for his birth city makes for a meditative study of Bombay in its many moods.

The story of the Wadia family is a sensitive exploration of love in its different forms—romantic, maternal, filial, platonic—and forgiveness. Umrigar’s fluid prose and well-wrought characters capture the milieu of the Parsi community past and present. Paired with the emotionally demanding story line, this is a compelling read.