A review by surbhibee
Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi

4.0

I have a lot of trouble thinking about NRI-esque books because they, at once, feel so eminently relatable and cliched. Small Days and Nights falls squarely in this category--a "foreign-return" Indian girl trying to reconcile her childhood, adulthood, and present. There isn't a "plot" as much as a messy process of the protagonist trying to straighten her various ties, to her estranged husband, dead mother, absent father, newfound sister, and the three countries she flits between. The prose is beautiful and Doshi's skills as a poet are evident in her command over every sentence. At the same time, the Indian side characters at times feel caricatured, but I have been feeling this about every India-based book I read nowadays so maybe I am the one who needs to do some figuring out on this front. Overall, was a thoughtful and touching read, one that I might go back to in a few years.