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A review by gilmoreguide
Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi
2.0
(2.5)
Small Days and Nights is the first of the ten books I was looking forward to this winter. I wish I could say it delivered, but this story of Grace, an Indian-American woman who returns to India after her mother’s death never connected with me. She inherits her mother’s beachfront home in a small village in Madras. She also discovers she has a sister with Down’s Syndrome who has spent her life in a nearby facility. Grace is determined to create a new life with her sister in their mother’s house.
There are interesting ingredients to Small Days and Nights—caretaking an adult with a child’s abilities, trying to reconnect with one’s homeland, navigating life after marriage, but they never come together. Everything is relayed in a way that feels leaden, flattened. I wanted to be pulled into Grace’s story, but never was.
Small Days and Nights is the first of the ten books I was looking forward to this winter. I wish I could say it delivered, but this story of Grace, an Indian-American woman who returns to India after her mother’s death never connected with me. She inherits her mother’s beachfront home in a small village in Madras. She also discovers she has a sister with Down’s Syndrome who has spent her life in a nearby facility. Grace is determined to create a new life with her sister in their mother’s house.
There are interesting ingredients to Small Days and Nights—caretaking an adult with a child’s abilities, trying to reconnect with one’s homeland, navigating life after marriage, but they never come together. Everything is relayed in a way that feels leaden, flattened. I wanted to be pulled into Grace’s story, but never was.