Review: The Magnificent Ruins

The Magnificent Ruins by Nayantara Roy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars rounded up.

This is a typical generational/family book filled with lies and secrets. The author's analogies are quite descriptive and lyrical, even poetic at times. However, sometimes, they are just a tad too much.

The main character, Lila, seems to have split personality disorder. One minute, I feel I should be totally on her side, and I love her. The next, she seems to have a personality turnaround, and I dislike her immensely. She also cannot seem to get over her feelings of dislike/hatred for her mother. However, her mother seems to have the same sort of disorder that Lila has. The author does a great job dealing with all the different types of hate throughout this novel. But it does get a bit depressing at times.

Several storylines were unnecessary to advance the plot, in my opinion. We didn't really need romantic interests when this was a novel about family. We also didn't need the death of a family member, and I thought it was a little too much, but because of who it was, I can see why it was necessary. I would have liked to see a little more of Lila deciding what to do about the house and why she chose the path that she did.

I did find it interesting to learn about India, its different factions, and political parties. However, I had a difficult time with the language. Kindle can't seem to translate this form of Indian into English, so I feel like I missed out on a lot.

It was a very good read, and I would recommend it to those who want something different, educational, historical, and, at times, fiendish.

This ARC was supplied to me by the publisher Algonquin Books/Hachette Book Group, the author, and NetGalley.

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SYNOPSIS: "Vikram Seth and Thrity Umrigar meet Rebecca in this sweeping multi-generational debut novel by accomplished television executive Nayantara Roy, about a young Indian American book editor from Brooklyn who returns to Kolkata when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home, and the secrets that lie within it.

It’s the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor 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 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 more 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. For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read."