Antara is a woman in Pune, India, who looks after her mother, Tara, as Tara's mind starts to fail from dementia. Tara was once a free-spirited, reckless woman who left her marriage to join an ashram guru and neglected her daughter, and Antara has never forgiven her. As she bathes, feeds and manages her mother, she revisits their history of hunger, abandonment, art and cruelty. Avni Doshi writes in a cold, precise first-person voice about the uneasy overlap between love and resentment, and about the ways children inherit their parents.
Readers who like unsentimental family novels, with an unlikable narrator and little comfort, will find this a sharp, uncomfortable study.
Deep, inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2019
- Language
- EN
