Every Book Has Its Own Starting Point: 5 Questions with Thrity Umrigar, Author of The Museum of Failures

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The Museum of Failures is such an interesting title. Can you tell us a little about what inspired it? Did the title or the book come first?  

This time, the title came first. In fact, it came years before I wrote the book. I read about The Museum of Failure in Sweden and thought it was such an evocative name that I squirreled it away, hoping to use it at some future date as a book title. When I was writing the section about Remy musing about his birth city of Bombay, a city that elicits complex, even contradictory feelings in him, I thought of the phrase I’d been hoarding, and it fell into place. Eventually, that became the title of the novel.  

Both Honor and The Museum of Failures revolve around buried secrets that change the course of the characters’ lives. What draws you to center your stories on these?  

This is an interesting observation. I hadn’t quite thought of the two books being related in this manner. I think the secret at the heart of each novel grew organically. I think human relationships, human society is often governed by secrets, by those things that are not said.  And this can cause tremendous pain and misunderstanding. I think fear is what drives people to keep secrets and when these happen to be intergenerational, they can play a very corrosive and destructive role in family life.

When I came to America at age 21, I was so disarmed by how open and chatty people were. I would ride the bus to the grocery store as a grad student and within three bus stops, the person sitting next to me would tell me shockingly personal things about themselves. Coming from a private, reticent culture, I found such openness very refreshing and honest, if a little shocking. Of course, all these years later, I have a better understanding of not just American culture but of human nature. I now understand that every nation, every culture, perhaps every family harbors its own secrets. But I suppose it’s not a coincidence that the two novels you mentioned are both set in India.

Food plays a big part in this book. Can you tell us more about the relationship between food, love and memory in The Museum of Failures?  

Well, as an immigrant, one of the things I miss the most about India is the fabulous food. I grew up in a household where hospitality was king — we piled food onto the plates of our guests until we practically force fed them. It was a matter of pride that people left our dinner parties totally sated. And in a Parsi household, food played such a distinctive role on occasions happy and sad. Certain foods were associated with happy occasions such as birthdays and holidays. Other dishes were associated with funeral ceremonies. And food was clearly how my parents expressed their love — by the careful preparation of my favorite dishes, by making sure I ate regularly, because I was a finicky eater as a child. “Eat, eat, eat,” is a mantra I grew up hearing.

When you’re starting a new project, what comes to you first — the narrative voice, characters, or story idea?   

Every book has its own starting point. I’ve had books come to me with the first and last lines. I’ve had books that have presented themselves to me in their entirety within a span of a minute. I’ve written novels because a certain character spoke to me insistently, haunted me until I put her down on the page. Museum was born from a feeling — a feeling of sorrow, of wanting to understand the toll that immigration takes on a person, the desire to capture for readers that feeling of leaving behind everyone and everything that you love each time you visit home and then leave. 

You’ve written nine previous novels, three picture books and a memoir. What inspires you to write, and could you tell us a little about your writing process?  How does it differ between each category?

The children’s books are easy — I think of picture books as illustrated poems. With each of those, I’ve wanted to get a specific message out into the world. The novels are more complicated in that the inspiration for that comes from varied sources. Sometimes, it’s simply a topic — such as the notion of white privilege — that I wish to explore. Other times, it’s an ache or a feeling that I want to share with readers. Other times, it’s a strong desire to shed light on a social issue that upsets me — honor killings or the treatment of domestic servants in India.

Regardless of the source, the writing process is pretty much the same. I don’t do a written outline of my books. Rather, I focus on getting to know my characters really well. I want them to be as “real” to me as possible before I write a single word. This means taking long solitary walks while I engage in a silent conversation with them, talking to them in the shower, thinking about them and their actions (which informs the plot) while I’m busy with everyday life — washing dishes, going to the movies, spending an evening with friends. I obsess about my characters and then, at some point, something clicks and I know I’m ready to start writing.