“The Museum of Failures” Gives Call to Action for Today, Teaches What to Pass to the Next Generation https://ift.tt/nJWfbVG
Perhaps the best part about reading fiction, aside from getting lost in make-believe worlds or the lives of fictional characters, is the edification attached to each story we read. Thrity Umrigar is top notch at delivering an education in culture and place with all her stories, and her latest novel, The Museum of Failures, is no exception.
Remy Wadia moved to America for college and never left. Instead, he met and married his wife, Kathy, a pediatrician, and together they have forged a relatively normal life together in Ohio. After struggling with infertility, though, Remy and Kathy decide to adopt when a close friend of Remy’s reaches out and explains that there is a young woman back in India looking to give her baby up for adoption. Although Remy hasn’t been back to India since his father’s funeral three years prior, he travels there with the intent of finalizing the logistics for the impending adoption. After arriving and almost immediately receiving bad news about the adoption, Remy also learns his mother – who has always been distant and difficult to deal with – is in the hospital and refusing to eat or speak. Following these two unexpected events, Remy extends his stay in Bombay and is dedicated to helping his mother recuperate before he heads back to America.
Although Remy and his father were unwaveringly close and Remy had the privilege of being from a family that had prominence in status, Remy’s life wasn’t easy. His mother was often verbally and emotionally abusive, and for a brief period of time inflicted physical harm to Remy as well. Because of this, their relationship was, at best, strained, but almost non-existent since the death of his father. During the days at his mother’s bedside in the hospital, Remy takes on a new fondness for his mother as he nurses her back to health. When she begins eating and speaking again, revelations about the past become apparent and what Remy once thought about his mother and father and their family is flipped on its side. Remy is left to reevaluate everything he once thought to be true and come to terms with the new information he has learned.
On the surface, The Museum of Failures can be construed as an emotionally relevant story about family, class, and culture. It is no secret that Umrigar has a knack for layering thematically complex structures and realistic characters, but in The Museum of Failures we see this delivered ten-fold. Not only are we delivered an education in cultural values, religion and family secrets, we also see the disparate ways of life through a man who has had success and struggles in both America and as a part of the Parsi community in Bombay.
“Most days, Remy felt as American as Mount Rushmore, but once in a while, these fissures reminded him that even though he had wholeheartedly embraced America, it was never guaranteed that America would embrace him in equal measure… This was the eternal burden of the immigrant, the divided soul. He would always be a foreigner in America, but the irony was, he was Also a stranger in India.”
We also see a loving and communicative relationship between a man and a wife while thousands of miles apart. We see the dichotomy of culture and what’s accepted and what isn’t. We see the turmoil inside an elderly woman and the sacrifices she made, wrong or right, to give her child some semblance of normalcy. “Time after time, she’d removed herself from the love triangle of their family, deliberately assuming a subservient position and nudging him closer to Dad. In order to spare him the anguish of torn loyalties, she had cast herself as the antagonist of their family drama.” Through it all, we see how decisions made over the course of a lifetime can take effect and trickle down through the generations. “He couldn’t change even a granule of the past, but he could shape the future.”
The structure of the novel is split into two parts: Book I and Book II, and as strong as the themes are, as vivid as the characters and their complex relationships are, there is a lack of unity throughout the first book. Although necessary to lay the foundation down for what is to come, at times the dialogue is redundant and monotonous. However, if you can sift through the first half, you will be rewarded for your efforts in Book II, where Umrigar’s mature and expressive writing rings true and necessary pieces of the puzzle start to come together.
In the end, perhaps the strongest takeaway from The Museum of Failures is the attention and call to action for the world we live in today. “He lived in a country riven by the same tribalism and hatreds that haunted lesser nations. He had always seen American democracy as a giant oak tree, with roots that went more than two hundred years deep. But it turned out the roots were shallow, held in place by custom and good manners, and all it took to lay them bare was one man who refused to play by the rules of civility and democracy.”
Remy was forced to pause and take note of the divide between where he came from and where his life presently was. As the story of his mother and father came into view, he understood that much more about the world and the sacrifices individuals make: “This was what held the world together, this unsung army of silently suffering standing women.” He had to come to terms with his position in life and how it translated from being the child, to being the adult, to eventually being a parent. Through all these observations and explorations on life, Remy learned about forgiveness and the importance of passing along the right lessons to the future generations.
FICTION The Museum of Failures By Thrity Umrigar
Algonquin Books
Published September 26, 2023
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