Small Days and Nights

November 1, 2019

Doshi follows up her first novel, Pleasure Seekers, with a beautiful tale of family, love, and acceptance featuring Grace Marisola, of Italian and Indian descent. Following the death of her mother, Grace leaves her husband behind in America and returns to her mother's home in Chennai. After tending to family affairs and revisiting childhood memories, she goes to Venice to spend time with her father. There she learns the startling news that she has an older sister, Lucia, who was born with Down syndrome and secretly institutionalized by her parents. Eager to connect with Lucia, Grace brings her to their mother's home and takes on the challenges of being a caregiver. VERDICT In dreamlike writing that overflows with emotion, Doshi investigates culture, caste, politics, and ethics, as Grace struggles to bring some semblance of meaning to her life. Sure to be popular with book clubs and readers who appreciate getting caught up in a work that transports them beyond borders. [See Prepub Alert. 7/15/19.]--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2019
Grace Marisola returns to India from the U.S. upon her mother's death, leaving behind a crumbling marriage, only to discover that her mother has left her a beach house in Madras--and, even more surprisingly, that she has a sister she never knew about, Lucia, who has Down syndrome. Grace moves Lucia from the institution their mother secretly funded to care for girls with special needs to the secluded beach house she's inherited. Here, on the outskirts of rural life, she tries to cultivate a sibling bond. The novel unfolds from Grace's first-person perspective and in the present tense, which can sometimes be cumbersome but feels poignant here for the way it creates immediacy in an otherwise meandering tale. Grace's lonely childhood is newly refracted by Lucia's existence; she recalls her parents' story, examining how a couple might decide to allow an institution to raise one of their children and the consequences of that decision on their marriage and the child they kept. Grace's own marriage is failing because she doesn't want children and her husband does. Feelings of alienation stemming from her childhood and worry about the fate of the planet, among other things, have led her to choose a life at the edge of the world. She makes her own nuclear family with Lucia and a pack of energetic dogs, a precarious existence at best. Doshi (Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, 2017, etc.) is excellent at conjuring atmosphere, particularly a sense of menace regarding the dangers that confront women in both rural and cosmopolitan India. She needs few words to breathe life into her characters and setting, the stars of the story. Grace can be judgmental and mean, but Doshi has also endowed her with intelligence and sensitivity. All of these qualities make Grace a worthy prism for the profound questions of what it means to belong to a family and a community. This exploration of loneliness is a feat of lyricism.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2019
Grace was unaware of her sister's existence until their mother's death revealed the family's three-decades-plus secret. Grace returns to her native Madras from America, where she's been living since college, working in customer service and watching her marriage implode over progeny disagreements. She's jet-lagged but Ma's best friend, Kavitha, won't let her rest: ?Now, you must listen.' Four years before Grace, Lucia was born a Mongoloid and entered the nearby Sneha Centre, where Ma disappeared every Thursday. Ma has bequeathed Grace seaside land, a remote house, and Lucia. With little left of her stateside life, Grace begins to navigate her inherited community, her new sister, their ever-multiplying canine companions, and a village in which women living on their own is a potentially dangerous anomaly. Doshi (The Pleasure Seekers, 2010), herself Madras-born, has a younger brother with Down Syndrome, and she has revealed that reading about Arthur Miller's 1960s decision to institutionalize his Down Syndrome son provided literary inspiration. Doshi certainly writes with eyes wide open, never minimizing the challenges and the failures that prove both damning and redemptive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)