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musewithxara's review
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Body shaming, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Vomit, and Dementia
Minor: Rape
bookmaddie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I must admit that I finished this book primarily because it was short. While the writing style and premise intrigued me at the beginning, as the story wound on the main character just got more and more annoying to me. I feel like the author was trying to embody the ~distant artist~ vibe, which can work in some iterations, but here I found it so odd. She is an artist and clearly thinks abt her practice and emotions in some sense, yet the narrative was so flat—there is no emotional depth here. The main character refuses to address any trauma that she has faced, and while that kind of leads into the bizarre ending, I don't think it was worthwhile. It just made the story feel very shallow.
Besides that, I found the narrative structure to just be a bit lacking and jumpy—quickly going from flashback to present and back again. It was hard for me to form a coherent picture of her present day. I also thought this would be more about her mother's memory loss but instead it devolves into a picture of the main character's trauma—yet doesn't bother to really examine that much in context with her mother's memory loss.
The ending really turned the book on its head, though. I think on one hand, it added a real level of interest when contemplating the story as a whole. But even so, I still feel like it didn't add much to the story to make me like it more. While I understand what Doshi was trying to do with this book, I just feel like it fell flat for me. There was something missing—I think I just wanted more depth and acknowledgement of trauma and memory.
Besides that, I found the narrative structure to just be a bit lacking and jumpy—quickly going from flashback to present and back again. It was hard for me to form a coherent picture of her present day. I also thought this would be more about her mother's memory loss but instead it devolves into a picture of the main character's trauma—yet doesn't bother to really examine that much in context with her mother's memory loss.
The ending really turned the book on its head, though. I think on one hand, it added a real level of interest when contemplating the story as a whole. But even so, I still feel like it didn't add much to the story to make me like it more. While I understand what Doshi was trying to do with this book, I just feel like it fell flat for me. There was something missing—I think I just wanted more depth and acknowledgement of trauma and memory.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Body shaming, Emotional abuse, and Blood
Minor: Abortion
nakutski's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Blood, and Dementia
Moderate: Body shaming and Bullying
lottelow's review
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Dementia
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, and Toxic relationship
penelopereads's review
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Can’t make up my mind about this book. It’s uh... transgressive. I was filled with a sense of dread reading it. It’s grimy.
The storytelling is good though and you name it - the author went there. The writing also stopped me in my tracks a few times.
Still, I don’t really know what to think. Is it really bad or really good? Someone please tell me where I should land.
The storytelling is good though and you name it - the author went there. The writing also stopped me in my tracks a few times.
Still, I don’t really know what to think. Is it really bad or really good? Someone please tell me where I should land.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Incest, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, and Dementia
daisymaytwizell's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
You meet more Taras and Antaras than I can count over the course of this novel, and Doshi never once falters in her weaving of them.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse and Dementia
Minor: Body shaming and Mental illness
nora__reads's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
2.0
I can understand the many merits of this book. It is a clever and considered novel asking questions about memory and their changeable nature, family relationships (particularly mother daughter relationships), the consequences for women who choose to make themselves happy and obsession.
But I didn’t enjoy it. It was a very slow read, too clever for its own good, prizing point-making over storytelling all wrapped up in a pessimistic narrator who left me feeling hopeless.
If you want something slow which will make you think then go for it, but I was in the wrong mood at the time.
But I didn’t enjoy it. It was a very slow read, too clever for its own good, prizing point-making over storytelling all wrapped up in a pessimistic narrator who left me feeling hopeless.
If you want something slow which will make you think then go for it, but I was in the wrong mood at the time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Forced institutionalization
katie_greenwinginmymouth's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Read this as part of Idle Readers book club shadowing The Booker Prize. It was definitely a good one for a book club discussion and opinion was pretty split on it. Personally I love an unreliable narrator and I thought the way it worked with the storyline and central themes about memory was really clever.
The story is told through Antara whose mother is apparently beginning to show signs of early onset dementia. This causes problems in the already fraught relationship between mother and daughter and the book explores what it means to have to care for someone whose previous lack of care for you makes this particularly challenging.
But it’s exactly this difficult history that the two have that puts a huge question mark over the nature of Antara’s mother’s illness and we begin to wonder whether Antara’s assertion that her mother is unwell is in fact a way of her exerting control over her and is therefore another manifestation of the constant fight for power between the two women. There is a particularly striking moment when Antara has changed her mother’s diet to help with her brain health but then when her mother remembers a particularly inconvenient truth that Antara was trying to keep hidden she immediately switches her mother back onto the high sugar diet that keeps her foggy and docile.
The themes of memory and it’s mutability are brilliantly examined throughout and I was really struck by something a therapist says to Antara about how “reality is something that is co-authored.” Antara has a tendency to withhold important information from others which deliberately alters the version of reality others are able to access and puts different people’s memories of events in conflict with each other. The way this affects her relationship with her husband is hard to stomach but all too familiar. In a way the reader is put in the same position as her mother, details are withheld from us and we have to piece together reality from these fragmented memories.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Emotional abuse, and Dementia
empresstree's review
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Dementia
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