The Museum of Failures

Title:  The Museum of Failures

Author:  Thrity Umrigar

Publication Information:  Algonquin Books. 2023. 368 pages.

ISBN:  164375355X / 978-1643753553

Rating:   ★★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "All night long, the crows fought as a jet-lagged Remy Wadia struggled to sleep in an unfamiliar bed."

Favorite Quote:  "Because, ultimately everybody's story was written in scars."

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Review

The story of the museum of failures is ultimately about a family. In particular it is about how parents, even with the best of intentions, can sometimes fail their children. It is about the far-reaching impact of those failures for the children carry those scars into adulthood and into their own journey of parenthood. At the heart of the story is Remy Wadia, an adult who had made a life in America but returns to Bombay, India in the hopes of an adoption. Unexpected events lead him on a journey to questions what he has always believed about his life, his family relationships in India, and his own ability and willingness to be a father.

The book, however, defines itself in different ways at different points. "He had often thought of Bombay as the museum of failures, an exhibit hall filled with thwarted dreams and broken promises." Towards the beginning of the book, the book offers Remy's commentary on India, life in India, and of the reasons he left is all behind. Correspondingly, there is commentary about immigrant life in general and specifically in the Unites States under recent regimes. I almost want to stop as political commentary is not what I expect or want in this book. That commentary does not add to and is completely unnecessary for the story. However, this story is firmly set in Bombay. The US side of Remy's life never really developed. Thus, the political commentary does not permeate the story enough to distract from the focal point. 

Within the global commentary are the individual stories. "Of course, there were unhappy people everywhere on earth, and if you catalogued all their griefs and disappointments, every place could be considered a museum of failures. One could argue that this was the universal human condition." The sadness in this story belongs to Remy, his father Cyrus who is deceased but very much a character in this story, and his mother Shirin. Other supporting characters like Monaz and Dina have their own tragic stories that overlap Remy's.

The progression of the story can be measured in the next time the title appears. "There is no room for hope in the museum of failures. Even if it hangs on the walls for a moment, it usually comes crashing down." Cyrus dies without resolving the failures of their family's life. Shirin goes mute, harboring those failures. Remy holds on to the perceived failures of his parents and bears the scars of the choices. Even as an adult who has gone through therapy to resolve the hurts of his childhood, Remy has yet to reckon with that past. The story of what can only be termed abuse is tragic and horrifying. It seems unbelievable because I would like to think that it could not be possible. Yet, we all know that it is.

The next mention of the title highlights where the story ends up. "Because the only way to destroy the museum of failures is to burn every shameful secret that it has ever held." More than failures, this book is all about secrets. The ending of this book packages this family's entire history from before Remy's birth until his now-middle-age neatly with almost a bow. Every loose end is tied up. Every relationship and every concern is resolved. This, to me, lessons the impact of this story. Life is not neat, and a lifetime of issues are not so neatly resolved. Nevertheless, an emotional family story and a depiction of the immigrant experience that will stay with me.

About the Book

(from the author's website)

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.

About the Author

(from the author's website)

Thrity Umrigar is the best-selling author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, The Weight of Heaven, The World We Found, The Story Hour, Everybody’s Son and The Secrets Between Us. Her new novel, Honor, is an Indie Next List Pick for January 2022. Umrigar is also the author of the memoir, First Darling of the Morning and three children's picture books, When I Carried You in My Belly, Sugar in Milk and Binny's Diwali. Her books have been translated into several languages and published in over fifteen countries. She is a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

The Space Between Us was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins award, while her memoir was a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors award. If Today Be Sweet was a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection, while her other books have been Community Reads selections. Thrity is the winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize, a Lambda Literary award and the Seth Rosenberg prize. She is also the recipient of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard.

Thrity was born in Bombay, India and came to the U.S. when she was 21. As a Parsi child attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu country, she had the kind of schizophrenic and cosmopolitan childhood that has served her well in her life as a writer. Accused by teachers and parents alike of being a daydreaming, head-in-the-clouds child, she grew up lost in the fictional worlds created by Steinbeck, Hemingway, Woolf and Faulkner. She would emerge long enough from these books to create her own fictional and poetic worlds. Encouraged by her practical-minded parents to get an undergraduate degree in business, Thrity survived business school by creating a drama club and writing, directing and acting in plays. Her first short stories, essays and poems were published in national magazines and newspapers in India at age fifteen.

After earning a M.A. in journalism in the U.S., Thrity worked for several years as an award-winning reporter, columnist and magazine writer. She also earned a Ph.D. in English. In 1999, Thrity won a one-year Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University, which is given to mid-career journalists.

While at Harvard, Thrity wrote her first novel, Bombay Time. In 2002 she accepted a teaching position at Case Western Reserve University, where she was recently named a Distinguished University Professor of English. Her articles have been published in national publications such as The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

Thrity is active on the national lecture circuit and has spoken at book festivals such as the L.A. Festival of Books, the Tuscon Book Festival and the Miami Book Fair International; at universities such as MIT, Harvard University, and Spelman College; and at literary societies, civic and business organizations and public libraries all across the country.

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Honor

Title:  Honor

Author:  Thrity Umrigar

Publication Information:  Algonquin Books. 2022. 336 pages.

ISBN:  161620995X / 978-1616209957

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Her face is a constellation of stars."

Favorite Quote:  "Everywhere she went, it seemed, it was open season on women. Rape, female genital mutilation, bride burnings, domestic abuse - everyone, in every country, women were abused, isolated, silenced, imprisoned, controlled, punished, and killed. Sometimes, it seems to Smita that the history of the world was written in female blood."

***** BLOG TOUR *****

Review

Meena is a young woman. Born and raised in a small village in rural India, Meena grows up under the strict control of her brothers. She and her sister flout tradition by getting paying jobs to help support the families. Her brothers use her earrings but considering her working an insult to them. Meena, a Hindu girl, falls in love with a Muslim man. She is forbidden and then worse to prevent such a union. She marries him anyway. They have a daughter. They name her Abru. "It means Honor."

Meena's brothers exact revenge and, in their eyes, restore their honor by murdering her husband by burning him alive. He dies, and Meena is left permanently scarred. Her courage propels her further. She allows an attorney to file suit against her brothers. "Steel is forged from fire."

Everyone awaits the court's decision. This is the point at which the book begins and the point at which Smita joins the story. She is a reporter. She is of Indian heritage, but her family immigrated to the United States when Smita was young. Being back in India brings back to Smita all the reasons she loved India but all the betrayals and hate that caused her family to leave.

Through the story of these two women both past and present, the book tackles so many issues surrounding even modern day India - poverty, corruption, religious tensions, and, most of all, violence against women. This view is tempered through the depiction of Mohan, who embodies a passion for his homeland and a vision of what it could be.

The story of this book is Smita's story, including her telling of Meena's story and her own role in Meena's story. That is my only regret about this compelling and heartbreaking book. I want this to be Meena's story first and foremost. That is the voice I want to hear for that is the voice the world needs to hear. However, the book begins and ends with Smita.

Smita's story in and of itself is tragic and horrifying, but it is Meena's story that I want to hear more of. Smita's story is of strife between faiths, and times when friends and neighbors betrayed each other in the name of religion. Meena's story is of the strife between two faiths and even more so about the plight of women - women of any faith in a rigid, male dominated society. Smita's story is of a terrifying, horrifying, life altering event as a child, but it is about a way out and life - even a good life - after. Meena's story is about a lifetime of subjugation and abuse with no foreseeable way out. Smita's story is a reflection back on tragedy and the way in which a decision can alter the trajectory of an entire life. Meena's story is an ongoing tragedy. Not to mitigate the trauma in Smita's story, but I am drawn more to Meena's story. The fact that the books begins and ends with Smita highlights that disparity in focus even more starkly.

Nevertheless, both women are memorable characters, and the events described so tragic that the book will stay with me for a long time.

About the Author

Thrity Umrigar is the bestselling author of eight novels, including The Space Between Us, which was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, as well as a memoir and three picture books. Her books have been translated into several languages and published in more than fifteen countries. She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award and a Seth Rosenberg Award and is Distinguished Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. A recipient of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, she has contributed to the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Huffington Post.

About the Book

The bestselling author of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award finalist The Space Between Us and eight other critically acclaimed novels that have been published in over fifteen countries, Thrity Umrigar has long been known as an author with “an uncanny ability to look deeply into the human heart and find the absolute truth of our lives” (Luis Alberto Urrea). Now, it is with great excitement that we welcome Umrigar to the Algonquin list with HONOR (Publication Date: January 4th, 2022; $26.95), her ninth novel in a remarkably accomplished career. Returning to subjects that have long haunted her work—the complex relationship between women of different classes, the power of privilege and wealth, and the lively, frenetic energy of Mumbai—Umrigar’s HONOR is a “powerful, important, unforgettable book” (Cheryl Strayed) that shows she is working at the height of her extraordinary talents. As New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate says, “In the way A Thousand Splendid Suns told of Afghanistan’s women, Umrigar tells a story of India with the intimacy of one who knows the many facets of a land both modern and ancient... A place where love can sometimes involve the peril of defying convention, and ultimately risking everything for what matters most.”

When a young Hindu woman is brutally tortured for marrying a Muslim man, and her husband murdered, Indian-American journalist Smita travels to India to cover the story of the young widow, Meena, and her attackers—her own brothers, who feel their sister’s forbidden marriage brought unforgivable shame to the family. Returning to Mumbai for the first time in twenty years, Smita sees a country entrenched in outdated beliefs about caste, religion, and patriarchy, a country where a woman can meet violence for exercising any amount of autonomy. But Smita’s harsh assessment of modern India is complicated by Mohan, a lifelong Mumbai resident with progressive ideals and a fierce love of his country who becomes her unofficial partner in her quest to bring awareness to the tragedy. As Smita works for justice on behalf of Meena and her infant daughter, she must also reckon with the privilege she now has as an American—and finally face the trauma that led to her own family fleeing India all those years ago.

“A few years ago, I read a series of articles in the New York Times about the misogyny endured by women in rural India,” says Umrigar, a recipient of the Nieman fellowship at Harvard, a Distinguished Professor of English at Case Western University, and former prize-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe. “I lived in India until I was 21, but since I was raised in a modern, urban family, some of the ‘traditions’ and rituals I read about—most of which are rooted in iron-clad beliefs about caste and religion and patriarchy—shocked me. I began to conceive of a novel where a woman who exercises basic human rights—the right to employment, to love and marry whoever she chooses—is brutally punished for her courage. I wanted to explore her inner life, the source of such bravery. And then I thought of a second character, one who has had the advantages of wealth and education, but who has also been wounded by the divisions in Indian society. I wanted to see these two women in conversation, to see whether they could inspire and support one another.”

“With HONOR, Thrity Umrigar continues her habit of laying bare the folly of our perceived differences,” says Connie Schultz, author of The Daughters of Erietown. “This an intense and spellbinding novel, ricocheting between fear and hope, and betrayal and redemption. HONOR is the story of the human heart in all of its complexities, and love worth fighting for.

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The Story Hour

Title:  The Story Hour

Author:  Thrity Umrigar

Publication Information:  Harper. 2014. 336 pages.

ISBN:  006225930X / 978-0062259301

Book Source:  I read this story based on the title and description.

Favorite Quote:  "We can't be responsible for other people's reactions to us ... We can only make sure that our intentions are good."

Lakshmi comes to the United States as a young bride. She has left her home and all she loves. She has married a man she barely knows. She is in a land that is completely foreign to her. Language is an issue. Culture is an issue. Lack of support is an issue. Marital discord is an issue. In desperation, Lakshmi attempts suicide. She is unsuccessful and ends up in the hospital under Maggie's care.

Maggie is a psychologist. She is married to an Indian man; this is perhaps the reason she is called in on Lakshmi's case. "Do white people presume some primal solidarity between all people of color?" Maggie is going through troubles of her own. She is having an affair and is uncertain of where her future leads.

Lakshmi and Maggie's relationship starts as that of patient and doctor, but it progresses to something resembling a friendship. Is it though? As they learn more about each other, they discover both their differences - "how vast the chasm that separated them - education, language, nationality, race" - and their similarities - "She go from being my teacher to becoming plain woman like me ... She turn  out same as me. Ordinary." Through this journey together, each woman also is on a journey of self-discovery and makes changes in her life for hopefully the better.

Lakshmi's story has potential to develop into more. Although the book begins with Lakshmi's attempting suicide, the story reveals her other decisions and the path that led her to this point. The book brings in the story of Lakshmi's life in India and how she comes to marry a virtual stranger. It brings in the motivation behind that decision and the far reaching repercussions. However, this aspect is narrated as the "big reveal" and the source of the guilt that Lakshmi harbors rather than being developed as a story in and of itself.

The other issue with Lakshmi's story is the way in which it is told. In an effort to make the character more authentic, Lakshmi's story is told in broken English. That is true to character, but after a while, it is just difficult to keep reading. Perhaps, maintaining that broken English in just the dialogue could have conveyed the same character? It would definitely be less awkward to read.

I just don't understand Maggie's character and don't particularly like her character. She is respected in her profession and is in a stable marriage. Yet, she's off having an affair. Her need for that is never made clear other than a general boredom with her own life. As a physician, she crosses a professional boundary with Lakshmi's, allowing their lives to overlap and for them to establish a relationship beyond doctor and patient. Maggie and her husband help Lakshmi gain independence and confidence. Yet, Maggie doesn't really offer friendship either. Maggie's character just never completely comes together.

This is the first book I have read by Thrity Umrigar. If I base a decision on this one book, I probably would not read any more. However, I have also had several people recommend her work to me. Maybe I'll try a different book.

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