This was the perfect book for me to read at this time. I noticed it when it came out in 2024 and was a “best book” in The Washington Post that year.
It tells the gripping story of Lila, a 29-year-old book editor living in Brooklyn. She had lived with her divorced mother in Kolkata until she was 16 when her father came from the US and took her there to live. She loved her life as an editor for a small publisher and enjoyed a wonderful close friendship with a colleague and an intense connection to one of the successful authors she edited. When the book opens, her company had been bought by a big publisher and she was given a major promotion. Just as that happened, she heard news that her grandfather in Kolkata died, leaving her the run-down five-story house where many of her relatives lived.
There are endless complications of being given a beautiful old house filled with relatives who haven’t maintained it, using the trust funds to pay for groceries and living expenses instead. The characters who live there include her mother, with whom she has been at war for her whole life, her beloved grandmother, a young social media influencer, a kindly great uncle and his twin, a charming monster, and more. No one believes the house should have been left to her. What a promising premise.
Some other complications arise for Lila. When she was a young teenager in Kolkata, her best friend and beloved boyfriend was Adil. When she returned to deal with the house, the two were drawn together and despite his marriage, had a torrid affair, which they oddly thought they could keep a secret. Another complication was that Seth, one of the authors she worked with, surprised her with a visit to India. They had been casual occasional lovers, but he surprised her with his visit and with his passion to be permanent partners.
So many concepts are touched on that I want to recall. First is the existence of the idle formerly rich, personified by Lila’s two great uncles who lived in the house. They were descendants of the zamindari, the Bengali land-owning ruling class set up by the British to collect money from the farmers for them. They were no longer rich but had enough to be able to drink tea, debate, and play board games.
The book does not touch on the politics of India until half-way through. We learned that Bengal was one of the few liberal states and that Kolkata was a liberal haven for Muslims, Christians, and Hindus. My knowledge of Indian politics is limited to knowing that Narendra Modi, Prime Minister since 2014, has weakened democratic institutions, reduced support for needy people and is a member of a right-wing Hindu paramilitary organization. My beloved late brother-in-law, Bimal, was a Hindu from Bengal.
Warning: several instances of domestic violence within the family became impossible to ignore, as they had been for decades. They included her mother’s violence toward her that was the cause of her father taking her to the US. This was not the main theme of the book; Lila felt the great love of the whole big family toward her. Despite giving that warning, I will say that for me this was a most satisfying book.
I do hope Nayantara Roy’s second book which comes out in early June is another good one.
Nayantara Roy, The Magnificent Ruin, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2024, 448 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available in the public library.