Doshi gives readers a raw, jolting look into how the unnamed narrator comes apart in the months after her husband’s declaration of divorce ... Six years after Burnt Sugar, her Booker Prize-shortlisted debut about a fraught mother-daughter bond, she brings the same instinct for turning ordinary domestic space into something dangerous.
It would be too glib to suggest that the novel traces a journey from deluge to deliverance, and Doshi is too intelligent a writer to leave us with facile resolutions, but this is a vivid and vigorous novel about the distress of marital collapse and a kind of self-seeking that strives to be restorative ... At her best, though, Doshi captures something that begins at the edges of the narrator’s understanding but which will gradually become more apparent and important: the staunch love of sisters and friends ... Doshi is excellent, too, on the sensitivity of daughters. In the midst of her breakdown, the narrator wakes up 'to the dark, to a daughter on either side, each holding one arm, grasping me for comfort, or perhaps to hold me down, chain me to the bed as though I were a madwoman.' Both are possible in this disquieting novel about the strange textures of female consciousness under pressure.
Doshi’s writing has a sharp clarity and a unique intensity. You may have read novels about failing marriages before, but never one quite like this. As much pain as the narrator experiences, it’s her strength and commitment to liberating herself from other’s expectations that will remain with the readers of this brilliant, unsettling sophomore novel.
...her crisp sentences are tangled by a mass of metaphors that overwhelm the story ... Repeat mentions of moons, planets and whether the couple’s astrological charts mean they were ever meant to be are quickly tiring ... It’s particularly disappointing given the intriguing crumbs of a family story that Doshi trails: parents with whom there is huge tension, and a sister she didn’t speak to for a long time, who herself experienced a period of madness as a teenager. The bones of an enthralling novel are here, but the approach feels all wrong.
Doshi’s blend of concrete details and dreamlike imagery effectively evokes the protagonist’s state of mind and makes for an impressionistic narrative. This unusual divorce story will stick with readers.
Doshi’s storytelling stands out. Her prose is tooled, dense and alert. Even a realist sentence on the suburban scenery, which could be merely functional, is a distinct and dreamlike picture ... A novel is also a form of communication, and there is a sense of urgency in the narrator’s messages to her reader. 'I do want liberation, not from life or death or any immense cosmic cycle but from my own fear, and the oppression of other people, their opinions, aggressions, and maybe even their love.' Her rejection of relationship is a bid for personal freedom.
