The Museum of Failures (2023) by Thrity Umrigar follows Remy Wadia, who has built a life for himself in the US but returns to his home in Bombay, India, to adopt a baby. He reconnects with his mother, Shirin, and in the process, he learns the truth about his family’s past and the root of his difficult relationship with his mother. The book explores The Complicated Nature of Family Relationships, The Harmful Effects of Secrecy and Shame, and The Disparate Strands of the Immigrant Experience.

Umrigar is an award-winning Indian American journalist, writer, and professor, whose works include fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. Like her protagonist in The Museum of Failures, Umrigar herself moved to the US when she was 21 and has lived there ever since; accordingly, her works often explore the Indian American immigrant experience. Umrigar has penned several bestsellers, including her debut novel Bombay Time (2001) and The Space Between Us (2005), the latter of which was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. One of her novels, Honor (2022), was also an Indie Next List Pick for January 2022.

This guide refers to the 2023 Swift Press Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss parental abuse and ableism. The novel also contains offensive language surrounding physical and intellectual disability, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotations.

Plot Summary

The novel is divided into two books. Book 1 opens with Remy Wadia visiting his home city of Bombay in India. Remy is a Parsi man who lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his American wife, Kathy; he has not been to Bombay since his father Cyrus’s death three years prior. Remy is staying with his close friends, Jango and Shenaz, and is in town to meet Shenaz’s teenage niece, Monaz, who is pregnant. Monaz’s family is extremely conservative and will never accept her pregnancy out of wedlock. Remy and Kathy, who have been trying for a child for a whole year, are hoping to adopt Monaz’s child. However, when Monaz arrives at Jango and Shenaz’s to meet Remy, she tells them that she is keeping the baby, as the father, her college mate Gaurav, has agreed to marry her.

A disappointed Remy decides to cut his stay in India short and only spend a couple of days with his mother, Shirin, whom he has not seen since Cyrus’s death. When he arrives at her apartment to surprise her, he is shocked to discover the place in disarray. His cousin Pervez lives with his wife, Roshan, in the same building as Shirin. They stay rent free in their apartment, owned by Remy, in exchange for taking care of Shirin. He learns that Shirin was hospitalized with pneumonia a few days ago; she also hasn’t spoken a single word in the past few months.

Remy has had a strained relationship with Shirin all his life because of her volatile nature. She was often hurtful toward him and constantly fought with Cyrus, to whom Remy was exceptionally close. However, when Remy finds his mother looking gaunt and unrecognizable at the hospital, he feels concerned for her for the first time. He actively begins to care for her, spending time at the hospital and coaxing her to eat. One night, when Shirin is delirious with fever, she calls out for “Cyloo.” Remy thinks that she’s referring to Cyrus and is comforted by the thought that she truly loved his father. With Remy’s care and attention, Shirin’s condition slowly improves; she even begins to speak again.

Meanwhile, Gaurav learns about Remy’s offer of adoption and backs out of marrying Monaz. Remy reassures a heartbroken Monaz that the offer of adoption still stands. Monaz decides to give her baby up after all, on the condition that Remy take her with him to the US so that she can have the baby there in secret. Remy meets with Dina Mehta, the family lawyer, to help him sort out the legalities of the adoption process. Dina was Cyrus’s close friend, and the two even dated when in college together. When Remy casually mentions Shirin calling out for Cyloo, Dina is visibly disturbed.

On Kathy’s urging, Remy finally breaks the news of the adoption to Shirin and introduces her to Monaz; Shirin takes the news surprisingly well, even inviting Monaz to stay with her if she ever needs to. Heartened by the idea of a prospective grandchild, Shirin tells Remy that she has had enough of the hospital and urges him to take her home.

Book 2 begins with Remy and Shirin back at their apartment. Remy delays his return to the US, enjoying his mother’s company for the first time in his life. One evening, as he fetches Shirin her prayer book, he discovers a photograph of a boy, titled Cyloo C. Wadia, who looks extraordinarily like him. Remy confronts Shirin about this, and she reveals that Cyloo was Remy’s older brother.

Cyloo was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, which cut off his oxygen and gave him brain damage. Shirin loved her son from the moment she set her eyes upon him. Cyrus, however, found it difficult to accept his son’s physical and intellectual disabilities and was always ashamed of him. This was contrasted by how deeply he loved and bonded with Remy, who was born two years later. Shirin resented this inequality in how Cyrus treated his two sons: He was eager to show Remy off, while he constantly hid Cyloo from his friends and associates. Cyrus, on the other hand, resented what he believed was Shirin’s neglect of Remy: Despite Shirin trying to be present for both her sons, Cyloo’s needs always came first to her.

As Cyloo and Remy grew older, there were a couple of incidents during which Cyloo hurt Remy while playing together. Following this, Cyrus secretly arranged for Cyloo to be admitted to a home for boys with disabilities, with Dina’s help. Shirin was outraged and distraught to have her son taken away from her, and she refused to accept Cyrus’s reasoning that Remy would have a better life without Cyloo around. She eventually learned of Dina’s involvement, and when confronted, Dina took Shirin to see Cyloo. Shirin was forced to admit that Cyloo was making progress at the home and getting the help he needed. With Cyrus refusing to bring Cyloo back home, Shirin settled for visiting him once a week on her own. However, this created a deep wedge between Cyrus and Shirin, and Shirin often redirected her anger at Cyrus toward Remy. This further intensified when Cyloo eventually died at the home a few years later in an accidental fire.

In the present, Shirin apologizes to Remy for keeping the truth from him and asks for his forgiveness for the way she has treated him all these years. Shocked and overwhelmed, Remy understands the depth of Shirin’s love for him, which led her to preserve his relationship with Cyrus through her secrecy. Remy forgives her, and they visit Cyloo’s grave together.

Having had enough of secrets, Remy encourages Monaz to tell her parents the truth by telling her and all his friends the truth about his own family’s past. To everyone’s surprise, when Monaz’s parents learn of her pregnancy, they decide that they will keep the child and raise it as their own. Once again, Remy and Kathy are left heartbroken as the chance of adoption disappears.

Remy stays in India to celebrate his birthday with Shirin and his friends before heading back to the US. On his birthday, Shirin arranges a surprise for him with Dina’s help: One of the sisters from the home Cyloo lived in brings a young boy named Anand for Remy to meet. Anand, who has lost his parents, was supposed to be adopted by an Australian couple who backed out at the last minute. Reflecting on everything that he has learned about his family and their past, Remy concludes that although he and Kathy had originally planned for a baby, they could come to love this young boy, too. The book ends with Remy and Anand flying kites together atop the terrace of Remy’s apartment building in Bombay.