THE MAGNIFICENT RUINS

Lila De’s life in Brooklyn is a success, but a bereavement that pulls her back to her homeland of India forces her to confront her demons.

Twenty-nine-year-old Lila is understandably saddened to hear of her grandfather’s death in India, the country she left at age 16. But she’s also shocked to learn she has inherited his enormous, historic, decaying mansion, still inhabited by generations of the Lahiri family, including her volatile, sometimes toxic mother, Maya, who divorced Lila’s father when she was an infant. Although just promoted to co-editorial director by the new management of her employer, a Manhattan-based publishing house, and involved in a relationship with a writer named Seth, Lila must return to Kolkata for eight weeks to attend the funeral and sort out her inheritance. Back in India, she is quickly swallowed up by family, responsibility, and memories, rediscovering her complex feelings toward Maya, whom she describes as “beautiful and fragile and cruel in the way children can be.” Then there’s Adil, her teenage love, still irresistible but now married. Soon, however, they are lovers. While seeming at first a novel about binary choices—New York or Kolkata, work or family, Adil or Seth—over (considerable) time this book’s core reveals itself to be darker and different, which helps explain the wariness and unpredictability that often characterize Lila’s responses. The narrative is long, and Roy doesn’t always seem in control of her pacing or able to keep all her plates spinning simultaneously, as the story widens to embrace legal shenanigans, national politics, and a family wedding. The book’s somber heart remains unrevealed until very late, arriving finally in a rush and a disconcerting shift of gears and narrative perspectives. Afterward, Roy works to restore order but more neatly than plausibly.

A rich but shape-shifting, imperfectly synthesized family saga.