The protagonist of this book is a wife and mother of Indian heritage living in America. We join her just as she is being told by her husband that he no longer wants to be married to her. This news triggers an unraveling that is in equal parts hard to read and hard to look away from. I related to so much of what was in this novel. Doshi writes about motherhood and wifehood with raw emotion and yet you feel a sense of self-editing from the protagonist. It is as if she is afraid to confront the intensity of her anger and resentment at a life, which upon reflection, has never truly fulfilled her. I absolutely loved Doshi's writing in this book. It reminded me of the Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante. Portraying the same seething feminine rage which kept me enthralled by all four of those novels. Doshi weaves elements of mythology and astrology into the story in a way which never felt heavy-handed or shoe-horned in. I also enjoyed the imagery of the cicadas going underground for several years only to be born, mate and die soon afterwards. This cycle of birth, death and rebirth is an excellent metaphor for the story as a whole. The First House is a layered, clever and consuming work. I will be thinking about it for many months to come. I would not be surprised to see this title nominated for the The Booker Prize. It is certainly worthy of that level of recognition. My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to be an early reader of this extraordinary novel.

Avni Doshi’s debut novel “Burnt Sugar” (“White Cotton” on its earlier release in India) was shortlisted for the rather left-field 2020 Booker longlist, and of four books at the intersection of the three dominant descriptors of that list which featured (per the Booker’s own website) 9 US based (albeit this author has subsequently moved to Dubai), 9 female and 8 debutant novelists. An at times humorous, almost voyeuristically uncomfortable examination of a difficult mother-daughter relationship, it wove a range of themes across a relatively simple narrative, such as memories (and common memories), who gets to tell family stories, belonging/exclusion, obsession, art history/life – being itself something of palimpsest art project – if anything trying too much thematically and in terms of ideas and references. The author acknowledged the literary influences of Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk – I saw a touch of Eileen Moshfegh and a strong comparison to Ariana Harwicz. And there is much similar in this her second novel – and this time the publishers mention with some accuracy Deborah Levy (especially with some of the opening imagery) and Gwendoline Riley (I would say there though that as well as a Riley’s first party narrator with dysfunctional parents especially mother, here the narrator is a dysfunctional mother herself) – and I would add Rachel Cusk with the links to the gaze of male artists on women. The novel opens with an image of the narrator – an American based, Indian-descended novelist - being beheaded by her office-worker husband when he come into the bedroom of their suburban family house (where they live with their two young daughters) in what I think must be 2024, to declare their thirteen year marriage at an end. And really the first part of the book is the narrator largely failing to come to terms with the news as she looks back across her marriage and what was clearly always a difficult relationship, with the second part perhaps more focused on her relationships with her dominant father, mother and her elder sister who lives with them. And that, returning to her debut, is the superficially simple narrative around which the author weaves both her often forensic prose (again with the same mix of black humour and discomforting revelation) and her myriad (albeit more controlled than before) of ideas and themes. One key recurring idea is of the cicadas – which this year are emerging from both their 13 and 17 year cycles, the third year relating of course to the duration of the narrator’s marriage (her wedding day being literally overshadowed by a cicada infestation) and the simultaneous, once-every-221-years emergence of both broods giving me my 2024 identification. But around this we learn much more of the cicadas lives in a way which I would say is linked implicitly to the narrator’s life. A statue of (the goddess) Diana by the sculptor Saint-Gaudens and its use by the architect Stanford White also features – in the early writing career of the narrator, in her next door neighbour’s garden, in her dream and related episodes and mediations recur in the book – with some more explicit (than with cicada) but equally well done links made to the narrator’s circumstances. Water is another constant theme – the narrator’s inability swim, and general hopelessness around water at first seems part of her realisation that she has allowed herself to be absorbed into a marriage in such a way that her husband’s decision to break it off leaves her literally helpless (she is also unable to drive and has no bank account) but turns out to be also related to an astrological prediction that lead to a familial hydrophobia – and water even provides the novel’s closing image. But as the last two both might imply this is a book which also examines (possibly centres – including in the astrologically-linked title and a brief Anne Carson epigraph “To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing”) wider mythological themes taking in the Greek gods, Hindi deities and astrology (both Vedic and Western). And I would say I have: conditional interest in the first (far more interested in the heroes than the gods – in complete opposition to the interest here); little to no interest in the second; and active disdain/hostility for the third. In almost its opening lines when her husband explains his inability to anymore ignore his aversion to the concept of marriage having seen to many unhappy couples, he finishes with “to ask him to believe in an institution that he had no faith in, well that was asking him to believe in someone else’s god” – and I felt the same about these aspects of what is otherwise an excellent novel.

“The First House” opens with the narrator, mother of two daughters, being told after 13 years of marriage that her husband doesn’t want to live with her any more. This leads to a partial breakdown, including an over reliance with astrology and an obsession with the unusual life cycle of the cicadas. (A fascinating topic and quite educational for the reader). There is a lot of unexpressed anger beneath the surface and a dawning realization that perhaps she was not as content with her life as she thought and how it is far easier to deny reality than face up to it. Her tricky relationship with her sister and parents adds another dimension to the story. As you would expect from Avni Doshni, it’s clever, well written and gives the reader plenty to think about. Many thanks to NetGalley & Penguin for the ARC

The First House by Avni Doshi! Our lead is a woman who is very happy with her life, the perfect marriage, the perfect husband, till one night, a sudden bombshell is dropped, Hubby who has apparently been unhappy for quite some time now, has had enough. He's calling it quits