It's 2015 and Lila De is a fiction editor living in NYC and building her personal and professional adult life. She grew up in Kolkata, India but has tried to put that behind her.....until she can no longer ignore it (and her mother) when her grandfather dies. To Lila's surprise, she finds out that she's inherited the huge, crumbling mansion that was her family home and also houses a cast of relatives, dependent on the estate to support them and their lifestyle.
Lila's family was once among the richest in the town but time, and lack of money and attention has resulted in a house with many challenges. That's just the superficial problems visible to the eye, and doesn't say anything about the challenging relationships she has with several family members, especially her mother.
For me, the first 2/3 of the book moved too slowly with a lot of distractions and detours. There was a lot of historical and family background which, while interesting, did seem to weigh the story down. The pace and focus picked up and it was worth sticking to!
Ms. Roy was especially successful with her descriptions of Kolkata and I loved the food details. The book was eye opening at times and shocking at others. Overall, The Magnificent Ruins was an impressive debut novel and I look forward to her next work!
Thanks to Netgalley and Algonquin Books for the opportunity to read The Magnificent Ruins. I received a complimentary copy of this book and opinions expressed are completely my own.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for the gifted ARC! This book was released in the US on November 12, 2024.

Nayantara Roy’s The Magnificent Ruins is a lush and evocative exploration of family, identity, and the weight of inherited legacies. The novel follows Lila, a conflicted and compelling protagonist, as she returns to India after her grandfather’s death to claim an ancestral home brimming with secrets and tensions. The narrative is steeped in sensory detail and rich cultural commentary, weaving Lila’s personal quest for belonging with broader examinations of colonial history, gender roles, and generational trauma. With its lyrical prose and intricate emotional landscapes, Roy’s writing invites readers to linger on the unspoken and the unresolved.

At its heart, the story examines the fractures within a family shaped by dysfunction and unaddressed pain. Lila’s relationship with her estranged mother—defined by silence, resentment, and cultural constraints—is central to the novel’s exploration of maternal legacies and the complexities of mental health in a context that discourages open dialogue. The ancestral house, decaying yet steeped in history, becomes a vivid metaphor for the family’s unresolved past and the struggle to rebuild amidst entrenched conflict. Themes of belonging and identity are woven throughout, as Lila grapples with her dual cultural heritage and the tension between modern independence and traditional expectations. Roy also engages deeply with systemic issues like colorism and patriarchy, adding layers of complexity to Lila’s journey.

While the novel’s themes are impactful, its execution stumbles in places. The inclusion of a love triangle feels tangential, detracting from the central narrative’s emotional weight. The multiplicity of conflicts—family disputes, social critique, and a rushed exploration of abuse—creates a sprawling narrative that struggles to maintain focus. The perspective shift in the novel’s conclusion feels abrupt and disjointed, leaving the resolution of key storylines unsatisfying.

Roy’s prose is undeniably lovely, and the characters are fully realized, making their struggles and desires deeply resonant. However, the novel’s pacing issues, an overly ambitious narrative scope, and a jarring use of the R-slur at its conclusion mar an otherwise poignant reading experience. While The Magnificent Ruins offers a thought-provoking meditation on identity and inheritance, these flaws ultimately lowered my rating to 3 out of 5 stars.

📖 Recommended For: Readers who enjoy introspective and lyrical prose, those interested in generational family dynamics and cultural heritage, anyone drawn to stories of belonging and identity, fans of Jhumpa Lahiri or Arundhati Roy.

🔑 Key Themes: Belonging and Dual Identity, Generational Trauma, Colorism and Patriarchy, Family Loyalty and Conflict, Cultural Heritage and Legacy.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Murder (moderate), Blood (moderate), Death (minor), Gore (minor), Mental Illness (minor), Police Violence (minor), Grief (moderate), Sexual Harassment (minor), Alcohol (minor), Misogyny (moderate), Domestic Abuse (minor), Physical Violence (minor), Death of a Child (minor), Child Abuse (severe), Infidelity (moderate), Ableism (moderate).

I very much enjoyed this novel’s rich detail and the ease with which the author drew me into the story itself. A terrific read during this winter holiday season and in any season. Have recommended it already to several good friends.

It is the summer of 2015 and Lila De recieves a phone call from her semi- estranged mother. Her beloved grandfather has passed away and left the ancestral family home to her. At the age of 16, she left her mother and maternal family to live with her father, she has not been back to Kolkota since then. She is apprehensive about seeing her mother again, with whom she's always had a tense relationship. As excited as she is to see her extended family again, she knows they are wary of her, especially now that she owns the house they've lived in forever.
She now has to make decisions regarding the grand, but dilapidated house, while simultaneously keeping the family happy. Lila's cousin, Biddy, is getting married and there is a lot to be done to make the house ready for all the festivities. As she becomes immersed into her family, she learns of all the hidden secrets and resentments within the walls. Age old customs and beliefs are held onto very strongly and Lila has to come to terms with quietly accepting them as well. While the relationship with her mother is just as strained as ever, she finds comfort in the arms of her teenage love, but that has it's own complications.

This book was almost a DNF for me but I pushed through and I'm glad I did. I wouldn't say the book was slow by any means, but it reads more like a long family saga, although it takes place over just 8 weeks or so. I did have a hard time finishing it quickly and think it was probably a bit longer than it should have been. I liked how complex all the characters were and as an Indian-American myself, I could understand all the difficult family dynamics and how things can often be shoved under the rug and not acknowledged. How society's perception is considered so important, and can also be the most damaging. The house was a great metaphor for the family inside. While on the outside it was grand, the insides were deteriorating.

Thank you to Netgalley and Algonquin Books for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Trauma does not leave our bodies easily. It is inherited by our children and translated, an inevitable language in our genes and blood, insidious in its ability to lie in wait under newborn skin, always at the ready to eventually morph and strike, and in that moment you will be fathoming of how certainly and quickly you might have turned into your mother. There was to be no freedom for us—not for my grandmother, my mother or myself. This I knew finally. Our unending cycles of hatred looped around us, a circular, rhythmic beat clanging on the prison walls of our violence, as we passed them on, calling them our mansions, generation after generation.

I have not been this enthralled in a family saga in quite some time. Immigrant families. Asian families. Indian families. Deep down, we're all the same. Secrets and lies will destroy us, but not so much as outsiders trying to pry in.

Lila is an editor at a prestigious publishing house. She has lived on the East Coast for quite some time, having followed her father there after he and her mother divorce. That scandal still follows her mother in India, a very traditional society.

One of Lila's authors, and occasional lover, Seth, is everything a pretentious rich white Jewish boy is: he lives in Brooklyn, he writes, and he is just a tad emotionally unavailable. If you're a LA girlie, he could be a Silver Lake boy.

He had been born into wealth and bred in Manhattan; at his book launch, his friends were familiar faces—occupants of the middle ranks of the Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and my bookshelf. It was territory I knew how to navigate, and I prided myself on having reached the same literary circles without pedigree or trust fund or whiteness.


Aetos, a big corporation I liken to Amazon, is buying out the publishing house. Changes are being made. Layoffs occur. Lila, however, is promoted. Is this a diversity promotion? Is it something else? We don't know, because concurrently, her maternal grandfather in India dies. He has left her the family home. This doesn't go over well with his siblings, various family members, and her mother, all of whom still live in the house.

As soon as Lila steps off the plane, questions abound. Not about her dead grandfather. Not about why she has inherited the house. About her love life. Asian families truly are all the same.

"So do you have a husband yet or not?"

"Yes, he's in my bag. I forgot him on the way over here."


Lila, like most big city people, is in therapy. Her mother plays a large part in this. I won't place all of the blame on one parent. I also haven't forgotten sad Jewish boy Seth. However, there is a boy from her youth still lurking in the background. Now that she is back in India, he is no longer in the background. He is, however, married. That doesn't stop them.

Lila's mother is rather invasive about her love life, or lack thereof. This sounds like an exact conversation I've had with my parents.

"Well, I'm not seeing anyone exclusively right now."

"What does that mean? What is 'exclusive'? Like, special? Like an exclusive designer dress?"


Family sagas aren't really family sagas without secrets, lies, and a little crime. I won't say I was floored by what happens toward the end, and I won't say I'm unhappy, either. You get what you get.

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books

I LOVED this book so much! It is a great read. I have recommended this to a lot of people and suggested it to several bookclubs as well.

The Magnificent Ruins centers around Lila, an Indian American woman and successful book editor in NY who inherits her family’s crumbling ancestral mansion. As the new heir, Lila travels back to Kolkata to confront her immediate family who all reside in the home and reckon with their complicated history. With lush prose and richly drawn characters, Roy transports the reader to the bustling city of Kolkata while exploring bicultural identity, complex family dynamics, and generational trauma. An engaging and immersive family drama.

Totally absorbing, this novel offers up a family saga, adding in the Kolkata setting, great characters and a touch of politics, making for a fantastic read. Lila De unexpectedly inherits her family home in Kolkata. Leaving her Brooklyn home, her new promotion, and her friends, Lila flies to Kolkata to encounter her family questioning the legitimacy of the terms of the will. At the same time, Lila confronts the complicated history with her mother, eventually uncovering many family secrets and regrets. I loved the book and highly recommend it for the Indian culture, the family relationships, and the excellent writing. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Just when you think that your family could be the most dysfunctional in the world along comes the Lahiri family to set all of that straight and win the prize. If it could be considered a prize.

Lila De has been living in the United States for sixteen years since her father brought her over as a teenager when her mother’s abusiveness grew to be too much. Now Lila is a book editor, achieving a huge promotion when the small publishing company she works for is absorbed by a larger one. With that news, however, comes the news of her grandfather’s death and the fact that he has left her his house. The house comes with multiple floors of relatives including her mother. Lila returns to Kolkata to find a charged political situation as well as high tensions in the house as her relatives won’t give up their home without a fight in Nayantara Roy’s debut novel, The Magnificent Ruins.

This tale of behaviors recurring through different generations with bad behaviors being overlooked supposedly in the name of love and compassion is a stunning debut by Nayantara Roy. I did not find this an easy book to read for a variety of reasons including the unlikability of most of the characters (Biddy, Vik, and Seth being exceptions as well as the recently deceased grandfather) but also because the political unrest just brought my own environment constantly to mind.

While most of the novel is told in first person from Lila’s pov, one chapter is told from the pov of a Muslim police officer. Although jarring in its appearance, it served to enhance the political situation charged with bigotry and ethnic bias but also gave us an outsider’s perception of Lila, which the readers of first person fiction are hardly ever permitted. As well, it demonstrated how personal gains supersede law in even a very ethical, intelligent person. However, I’ll just mention that to my mind this was a gray area. Sorry for the ambiguity; I don’t want to give away the details of an event that happens later in the novel.

I did find the 448 pages to be a struggle at times, but, again, in a different situation (not the week of November 5th, for instance) that might not have been true. I was glad to have read it and enjoyed the rich cultural aspects that Roy provided.

Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy.

A fantastic novel of generational trauma that spans across continents. When Lila finds out she has inherited the massive family home in Kolkata after her grandfather's death she goes back to her place of birth to find the home in near ruins. She eagerly jumps in to rebuild and make the home into a place safe for her family members to continue living in. But, they are unsure of her intentions and try to block her every step of the way.

We soon learn that it's not just the home that is a magnificent ruin, but also her family. Too much trauma, not enough trust, and a good amount of abuse ( emotional, verbal, and physical ) has broken them down.

Can she rebuild the ruins of her family and home, will she even want to stay if she does? A stark reminder that secrets rarely stay secret forever, and the repercussions can continue to reverberate through the family long afterwards.

A vibrant, emotional family drama that swept me across continents and surprised me at every turn.

Lila De works hard at her publishing job in New York, and she is finally seeing some upward progress when she receives a call from her mother in India.

Lila’s grandfather has passed away, and shockingly, he has left Lila the historic family estate, though in disrepair. Now, she must travel back to India, the home she left at age sixteen, to face her mother and much of her family, who all question why she inherited the family home.

I loved the family dynamics at play here. Lila and her mother have a very complex relationship. Lila’s cousin is getting married, so now she must help plan the wedding. Lila runs into her first love, and it gets messy. All the while, she must deal with legal issues and personal grudges regarding the mansion she just inherited. I also felt for Lila, as her family treated her like she didn’t know things about India, yet she had lived there until she was sixteen.

When I’m thoroughly immersed in Lila’s family drama and the Indian culture and cuisine, the author throws in another death, adding a bit of mystery to this amazing debut.

𝐴 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑖𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦, 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠.


Thank you @algonquinbooks for the gifted ebook via #NetGalley.

Thank you so much to Algonquin and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for my honest review.

Readers who enjoy multigenerational family sagas will want to pick up The Magnificent Ruins. The story follows Lila who reaches a career crossroads at the same moment her beloved grandfather dies and wills the family house in Kolkata to her -- the house where her extended family and her manic-depressive mother all live. So Lila takes a leave of absence to travel back to Kolkata, where she attempts to balance the conflicting wants and needs of her aunts, uncles, and cousins with making the right choices for her.

This is a rich reading experience. I found myself sinking into it like a comfy chair and I really enjoyed Lila's narration. There are plenty of interesting observations and layers to the story that concern Lila's career, what she has worked for and whether that effort has paid off and gotten her to a place where she actually wants to be. I also enjoy a family saga and there is plenty of drama, intrigue, history, and secrets within these pages. This is a solid debut and I think it would make a good Christmas gift for anyone who likes to spend the entire week between Christmas and NYE reading.

Following a young woman’s return to her family home in Kolkata, this book explores themes of inherited trauma and cross cultural belonging. I thought the descriptions of the family mansion and Kolkata were so vivid and the details concerning food made me salivate. I got annoyed sometimes at the main character but I do think she found herself in the end. I received digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

{3.5 stars}

Thanks Algonquin Books for the gifted copy. All opinions below are my own.

Lila is an editorial assistant living in New York with very little in the way of commitments until she receives a call that she has inherited her grandfather's Indian mansion upon his death. She is shocked as generations of her family including her mother currently live in the sprawling yet dilapidated estate. She flies home to India to find that the rest of the family is angry and planning to contest her ownership. What follows is 8 weeks of their lives with Lila reimmersing herself in her family member's problems which include domestic abuse (both physical and emotional), gambling and alcoholism. What was once a storied Indian noble family has fallen apart at the seams and she needs to decide what is the right thing to do for all of them.

I have to admit, there were a lot of unlikable characters in this one. That said, it felt like a very realistic family with complex dynamics and everyday struggles. I didn't like the way they treated each other for most of the story. I did enjoy the immersion in the culture as they gave us the family history and planned the family wedding. The ending sort of took a turn that I wasn't expecting and I'm still not sure was necessary but I get the message that messy families will always be messy.

Read this one if you liked The Museum of Failures or The Book of Everlasting Things.

In some ways, I would consider Lila De a lucky woman. She’s an editor at a rising publishing house in New York. (I would love to have this job, if I couldn’t be a librarian.) She makes enough to afford her own apartment in one of the most expensive cities in the world. On the other hand, she’s less lucky in love and downright unlucky when it comes to some members of her family. Lila’s sudden inheritance of her grandfather’s house in Kolkata—where many of the members of her mother’s family live—turns out to be as much good luck as it is bad. The Magnificent Ruins, by Nayantara Roy, follows Lila as she wrestles with literal and metaphorical inheritances, good and bad love, and the past and the future of her very messy family.

The Lahiri house is in bad shape when Lila arrives in Kolkata. Nothing has been modernized or even repaired for a long time. But the condition of the house is secondary to the turmoil of feelings Lila experiences when she sees her mother, uncles, grandmother, and other relatives after so long away. Distance was Lila’s best defense against getting sucked into her mother’s drama (I suspect a personality disorder here) and the pettiness of her spoiled relatives. (Her uncles have never worked. They live off of the interest from the Lahiri trust, which was set up decades ago when the family was much richer.) She loves the Lahiris but they drive her insane.

Because Lila is a fixer, she meets with lawyers and contractors to try and restore the Lahiri house to something approaching its former glory. And because the Lahiris are who they are, they interfere constantly. Even more lawyers are involved. Fights are had. A wedding is held. A lover drops in at the worst time. And, along the way, a lot of secrets about the family are spilled. Reading this book made me feel like a fly on the wall, overhearing things that the Lahiris really don’t want other people to know. The gossip is delicious but, after a while, I kind of felt like I needed a bit of therapy to deal with the emotional backwash. I realize this sounds bad but I really appreciated learning from Lila’s attempts to understand her difficult family members. She has a bigger heart than I do.

Estranged from her mother, young lila, has made a life for herself in Brooklyn. Her world comes to a hault when she inherits an ancestral home. This home is in Calcutta, India. upon arrival she is quickly greeted by unhappy family members. This is a tender and heartfelt read. I loved it!

As always, thanks to Algonquin Books for sending me this ARC! I think this is the first book I have read published by them and it won't be my last.

Reading this book was like reading a Bollywood movie! Every emotion you can think of was conjured while reading this story. It even had a little twist at the end that I was not expecting and I audibly said "WAIT WHAT!?" and had to go back and reread a little bit for the "O.M.G." moment.
The author did an amazing job with the world building. I could see every landscape and taste every meal as if I was standing in the world with the characters. Also the little tid-bits of history on the region and political climate added so much to the story.

The Magnificent Ruins is a compelling and moving debut from Nayantara Roy. While it may have some flaws, the novel's strengths make it a worthwhile read. Roy's vivid writing, well-developed characters, and nuanced exploration of themes make the book a standout. The novel will appeal to fans of family dramas and stories about identity and belonging. Readers who enjoy character-driven fiction with a strong sense of place will also find much to appreciate in The Magnificent Ruins.

“The Magnificent Ruins” by Nayantara Roy is an intriguing family saga filled with complex relationships and rich cultural descriptions, set against the backdrop of Kolkata. When Lila De, a young Indian American editor from Brooklyn, unexpectedly inherits her family’s ancestral home, she finds herself navigating not only old family resentments and secrets but also her own identity caught between two worlds.

The novel does a beautiful job capturing the sights and sounds of Kolkata, immersing readers in the vibrancy of the city and the multifaceted Lahiri family. Roy’s descriptive prose brings the setting and family home to life, making it easy to feel the weight of Lila’s inheritance and the fractured family dynamics.

However, the book can feel a bit drawn out, with some side plots—like the love interests and a late mystery—seeming unnecessary for the main narrative. Though the story meanders at times, “The Magnificent Ruins” still offers a heartfelt exploration of family, legacy, and self-discovery. Fans of immersive generational tales will find much to enjoy here, even if the pacing is a bit slow.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin books for the advance copy. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

A wonderful family saga ,we follow Lila from her home in NewYork back to her family home in India.,after her grandpa dies.I was immediately drawn in to the story the family all the characters.I enjoyed this absorbing novel from beginning to end ,looking forward to more from this author.#netgalley #algonquinbooks.