The Museum of Failures

Content Warning: This section discusses parental abuse and ableism.

Shirin and Remy’s strained relationship forms the central conflict of the novel, and the narrative tension revolves around exploring the reasons for and resolving the conflict. Over the course of this resolution, Umrigar examines the way family relationships and roles are rarely black and white. There are layers that make up these complicated dynamics due to intergenerational rifts and changing dynamics of care and dependency within the family structure, and Remy’s journey involves understanding this. Umrigar suggests that people should seek to understand each other in family rifts to unpeel these layers and heal.

The first hint of how complicated family relationships can be is the stark difference between how Remy remembers Shirin and how he and Shirin behave toward each other in the present. In the opening pages of the novel, Remy dreads meeting Shirin. His negative feelings toward Shirin are qualified by his memories of his childhood peppered throughout the narrative, with incidents detailing the rejection and verbal and physical abuse he endured at her hands. This is contrasted by the deep love and closeness he shared with Cyrus. However, finding Shirin unwell and vulnerable evokes feelings of tenderness and concern, suggesting that there was some maternal love and bonding in his childhood. Positive memories, too, begin to surface, detailing a particularly happy trip to Goa when he was young or Shirin indulging him with food. Similarly, Shirin displays no trace of antagonism toward Remy in the present. If anything, she is joyful and relieved to have Remy in her life again, and this speeds up her recovery. These conflicting pictures of past and present hint that there is more beneath the surface than is apparent, and this is the central mystery in the novel. The mystery finally begins to untangle when Remy inadvertently discovers Cyloo’s existence.

Remy’s fresh knowledge of his family’s past helps to clarify and contextualize his family dynamics. Cyloo’s story explains the source of Shirin’s volatility and resentment toward Remy, and it helps Remy to see his parents in a fresh light and understand how their choices affected the relationships within the family. With no explanation for Shirin’s behavior, Remy grew up casting his father in the hero’s role and his mother as the villain. Thus, he automatically attributed any conflict between his parents to Shirin. Now, however, Remy understands the part that Cyrus played in this dynamic. Shirin’s resentment and bitterness began with Cyrus’s initial response to his firstborn’s birth and intensified with every decision he made about his children thereafter. These revelations also help Remy clearly see what kind of parents Cyrus and Shirin each were: Cyrus’s love for Remy was deep, but as a father, he was not capable of unconditional love. In fact, it was Cyrus’s lack of connection to Cyloo that intensified the love and pride he felt for Remy in the first place. Similarly, Shirin’s abuse and resentment were a result of the frustration at being unable to express her maternal love equally for both her sons.

The conflict resolution in the book focuses on Shirin and Remy listening and learning to understand each other. Remy is able to forgive and accept both of his parents’ flaws and move on. Shirin’s remorse helps to repair the relationship between mother and son; additionally, her life is evidence of the harm that bitterness can cause, and so Remy is able to forgive his father and remember his love. The biggest sign, however, that Remy has processed, understood, and accepted the imperfect and complicated nature of family relationships is how the novel ends: With all that he has learned in the past few weeks, Remy feels confident about embarking on a parental journey of his own in a family dynamic that he had not initially envisioned.