The Magnificent Ruins
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4.5 • 21 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In this "rare feast" of a novel, a young Indian American book editor inherits her estranged family’s ancestral home–and their long-buried secrets (Rachel Lyon, author of Self-Portrait With Boy).
It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family that she thought she left behind sixteen years ago.
Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author—and occasional lover—is suddenly determined to make things serious.
As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of keeping everything under the surface.
Wise, witty, and deeply moving, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read and a stunning debut.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With her terrific debut novel, Nayantara Roy leans into the universal challenge of deciding what you want out of life. When her deceased grandfather leaves her the family’s home in India, up-and-coming book editor Lila De finds herself thrust back into the chaotic world of her mother’s family—and into the orbit of her now-married childhood crush. Caught between worlds, she must decide what path to follow. Roy revels in the sheer, undeniable messiness of life and navigating the borderless minefields of family, career, and romance. We loved the way the strained relationship between daughter and mother expanded to show us the generational influences that first created it. Roy throws in touches of scandal and intrigue, but at its heart, this is the story of a woman coming to grips with the aspects of life she’s tried hardest to ignore. The bridges that The Magnificent Ruins builds between cultures and generations are well worth crossing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roy debuts with an overstuffed family drama about a surprise inheritance. On book editor Lila De's 29th birthday in 2015, her maternal grandfather dies and she inherits the sprawling family home in Kolkata, which is currently occupied by her mother and members of her extended family. Despite earning a promotion after her employer is bought by a conglomerate, Lila returns from Brooklyn to India for the first time in a decade. While navigating her volatile relatives', as well as pressures from her new bosses to return to the U.S., she starts making repairs to the palatial house. She also reconnects with Adil, her now-married teenage boyfriend, and stumbles into an affair. The surprise arrival of author Seth Schwartz, with whom she's carried on a casual sexual relationship, complicates matters. Roy has a knack for immersive descriptions, but the pace drags as the plot becomes cluttered with legal drama (Lila's family files a lawsuit contesting her grandfather's will), a steady stream of construction snafus, and the excavation of generational trauma. It's a case of an author biting off more than she can chew.
