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The First House
From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Burnt Sugar comes a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth – for readers of Katie Kitamura, Deborah Levy, Gwendoline Riley and Elena Ferrante
‘I married my husband to live in a fairy tale. I imagined us like planets orbiting the sun or gods enacting their myths. Marriage was a solution and I wanted to be dissolved.’
A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.
As she sifts through the ruins of their shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into the forest of her own mind, where marital memories intermingle with myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses, messages hidden in the constellations, glimpses of a natural world seething and alive with portents. Over the course of a single summer, as the cicadas that have been buried in the ground for seventeen years prepare to emerge and fill the air with a plague of ecstatic transformation, the woman too is splitting, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.
This is a novel about unhappy families – about poison seeping through the domestic space, the bloody battlefield of the home, the enduring threat posed by those closest to us. Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, it is a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth.
‘I married my husband to live in a fairy tale. I imagined us like planets orbiting the sun or gods enacting their myths. Marriage was a solution and I wanted to be dissolved.’
A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.
As she sifts through the ruins of their shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into the forest of her own mind, where marital memories intermingle with myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses, messages hidden in the constellations, glimpses of a natural world seething and alive with portents. Over the course of a single summer, as the cicadas that have been buried in the ground for seventeen years prepare to emerge and fill the air with a plague of ecstatic transformation, the woman too is splitting, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.
This is a novel about unhappy families – about poison seeping through the domestic space, the bloody battlefield of the home, the enduring threat posed by those closest to us. Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, it is a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 16, 2026
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Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
What I had believed to be indestructible was gone. The way I had engaged with the world was no longer possible. The children came into the room, already in their pyjamas, and caught me talking to myself. They couldn't understand that I was meeting myself as someone new.
The breakdown of a marriage - complete with toxic husband - continues to prove to be inspirational fictional material in this book which follows nicely from prior incarnations such as The Days of Abandonment, Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation and Liars.
Doshi's precision-prose and willingness to delve into all that is uncomfortable about close relationships - which was so well displayed in her Burnt Sugar - charts troubled territory again as a husband disposes of a fifteen year marriage in a few stark sentences with which this book opens. Issues of power, money, imbalances in domestic work, all that is unsaid and uncommunicated are depicted with a brutal meticulousness as our narrator navigates unknown territory. Her willingness to accommodate her husband are offset by outbursts that show us just how disorientated she is, left alone with two young daughters and only precarious access to money.
But this is more than just a marriage breakdown book: Doshi also peels back the skin of the narrator's family and her troubled natal relationships with each parent and her sister. The light touch narration is astonishingly economic as we pierce to the heart of this family with so little exposition.
Where Doshi's craft really comes into its own is through the use of mythology and imagery - moving between classical and Indian myths as well as various forms of astrology and augury to reflect and reveal the narrator's own dilemmas and path to emergence into a future.
For me, this is a book all about the voice: I clicked with it immediately and was willing to follow where it led. Acute, emotive without being sentimental, textured and smart, I loved every careful sentence of this novel.
Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley
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July 17, 2026I definitely did not like the husband! From the beginning, he is a shifty, secretive character. How do you announce out of the blue that you are leaving a marriage of thirteen years, and simply walk off? There is no conversation or transition; it is an abrupt end. What follows is the emotional aftermath of a marriage that's crumbled, told through the POV of an Indian-American writer (the wife)—how the children automatically become the mother's responsibility and how quickly the man moves on, the disorienting situation of living in the same house which saw your marriage blossoming and dying, the tricky parts about financial matters and the horrifying reality of not being financially independent, the disagreements in parenting styles that now have to be conveyed to a person who has walked out of your lives. Life isn't easy because even when you are breaking down, you have kids to feed and groceries to buy with a credit card that keeps being declined.
I enjoyed the disintegration of marriage and the confusion of identity between self and being a wife and mother for so long. I also enjoyed the inevitable phase of the truth (which our protagonist tries to keep private) getting out, how family gets involved, how judgements are passed and more. It was good to explore how her mother and estranged elder sister are also in their own cages while giving advice.
But this is also where the novel falters. When too many relationships are introduced but there isn't enough time to understand or feel deeply for all of them. I would've loved to read more about her relationship with her sister, who in a typical elder sister fashion gives too much advice and crosses boundaries. But often, the protagonist herself was so unlikeable or behaving unreasonably that I was left without picking a side.
There are symbolisms in the novel, some of which landed for me (like the cat who comes in and out of their lives) and some didn't. Their neighbor has a statue of goddess Diana and there are some conversations and information-sharing around that. I was not able to appreciate the impact of it in the novel. While the astrology angle was interesting, the belief in the curse of water being a cause of death in the family (and overcoming the fear) felt lukewarm even though it makes an appearance several times.
Avni Doshi is definitely a good writer. And I believe she loves exploring the complexities of relationships. The First House is a good pick if you are looking for a book that dissects marriage and individuality in the Indian-American family system. My favorite by Doshi remains Burnt Sugar/The Girl in White Cotton about a toxic mother-daughter relationship.
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC. All opinions are my own.
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I enjoyed the disintegration of marriage and the confusion of identity between self and being a wife and mother for so long. I also enjoyed the inevitable phase of the truth (which our protagonist tries to keep private) getting out, how family gets involved, how judgements are passed and more. It was good to explore how her mother and estranged elder sister are also in their own cages while giving advice.
But this is also where the novel falters. When too many relationships are introduced but there isn't enough time to understand or feel deeply for all of them. I would've loved to read more about her relationship with her sister, who in a typical elder sister fashion gives too much advice and crosses boundaries. But often, the protagonist herself was so unlikeable or behaving unreasonably that I was left without picking a side.
There are symbolisms in the novel, some of which landed for me (like the cat who comes in and out of their lives) and some didn't. Their neighbor has a statue of goddess Diana and there are some conversations and information-sharing around that. I was not able to appreciate the impact of it in the novel. While the astrology angle was interesting, the belief in the curse of water being a cause of death in the family (and overcoming the fear) felt lukewarm even though it makes an appearance several times.
Avni Doshi is definitely a good writer. And I believe she loves exploring the complexities of relationships. The First House is a good pick if you are looking for a book that dissects marriage and individuality in the Indian-American family system. My favorite by Doshi remains Burnt Sugar/The Girl in White Cotton about a toxic mother-daughter relationship.
Thank you to the publisher for an ARC. All opinions are my own.
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July 11, 2026
I have to admit I was a bit annoyed at how dependent on everyone-both emotionally and financially- the main character was. Of course one has to choose what kind of life is right for them, but it felt almost old fashioned to rely so much on one’s husband and family. Luckily it changed as the novel progressed and I did like how it eventually evolves. It was well written, but in the end not a totally satisfactory read.
Thank you Penguin UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC
Thank you Penguin UK and Netgalley UK for the ARC
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Holy hell, this was so depressing.
August 10, 2026
The opening of The First House jolts the reader into attention: “When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared for thirteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married any more, I reach for my neck. My head is missing.” Not unlike Elena Ferrante’s Day of Abandonment, it promises a read that will dig deep into the negation of self that accompanies the collapse of a marriage that is considered predicable.
Indeed, in the first few chapters, the parallels with Days of Abandonment are hard to ignore as our narrator, the mother of two daughters, begins to unravel psychologically. But soon the differences between the two books become clear. Our narrator is a practicing astrologer and the “first house” rules the center of personal identity and the foundation of the self. And as she strives to sort out the fundamentals of living – some things as simple as getting to the grocery store when she can’t drive and does not have her own credit card – she also begins digging deep into the myths, legends, and astrological charts to make sense of the insensible.
At the same time, her environs seem to conspire to push her toward a greater understanding. Her husband’s departure – and most readers would say good riddance to him – is aligned with the 17-year cicada emergence. Cicadas are transforming everywhere, right in front of her, going through a physical metamorphosis and stepping outside of the bodies they emerged in. Similarly, her neighbor’s statue of the goddess Diana – considered a protector of sovereign women and respected for autonomy and strength – hints at a chance to create her own meaning and sovereignty.
As our narrator navigates this evolution that was thrust upon her, she also has to define her personhood against her controlling parents and older sister, her supportive but sometimes tone-deaf cousin, and her daughters who are trying to push the rules.
Gradually, the carefully crafted first paragraph of the novel is echoed and the “cutting off a the neck” allusion is understood: “She was giving it up, not life, but identity whichever identifies had been hers – mother daughter, sister, wife – she was cutting them off at the neck. And in that extinguishing of personality of playing a role or answering to a name, she and the women around her were strengthened.” I am grateful to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the invitation to access and read this multidimensional novel in exchange for an honest review. I’d rate this 4.5 stars.
Indeed, in the first few chapters, the parallels with Days of Abandonment are hard to ignore as our narrator, the mother of two daughters, begins to unravel psychologically. But soon the differences between the two books become clear. Our narrator is a practicing astrologer and the “first house” rules the center of personal identity and the foundation of the self. And as she strives to sort out the fundamentals of living – some things as simple as getting to the grocery store when she can’t drive and does not have her own credit card – she also begins digging deep into the myths, legends, and astrological charts to make sense of the insensible.
At the same time, her environs seem to conspire to push her toward a greater understanding. Her husband’s departure – and most readers would say good riddance to him – is aligned with the 17-year cicada emergence. Cicadas are transforming everywhere, right in front of her, going through a physical metamorphosis and stepping outside of the bodies they emerged in. Similarly, her neighbor’s statue of the goddess Diana – considered a protector of sovereign women and respected for autonomy and strength – hints at a chance to create her own meaning and sovereignty.
As our narrator navigates this evolution that was thrust upon her, she also has to define her personhood against her controlling parents and older sister, her supportive but sometimes tone-deaf cousin, and her daughters who are trying to push the rules.
Gradually, the carefully crafted first paragraph of the novel is echoed and the “cutting off a the neck” allusion is understood: “She was giving it up, not life, but identity whichever identifies had been hers – mother daughter, sister, wife – she was cutting them off at the neck. And in that extinguishing of personality of playing a role or answering to a name, she and the women around her were strengthened.” I am grateful to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the invitation to access and read this multidimensional novel in exchange for an honest review. I’d rate this 4.5 stars.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
”When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared for fifteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married any more, I reach for my neck. My head is missing.”
In The First House, Avni Doshi autopsies the end of a marriage. The husband tells his wife that ”marriage was impossible for him, not just with me, but as a concept. He realized that he didn’t believe in it, that it was a sham.” The wife, who’s the first person narrator, tells us that ”I felt the ground open up beneath me and I knew there was no end to how far I would fall. . . I didn’t know who I was without him. I could already feel parts of myself rotting. . . What I had believed to be indestructible was gone. The way I had engaged with the world was no longer possible.” The wife struggles to learn how to live without her husband, and how to negotiate her relationships with her pre-teen daughters, her close friend, her older sister, and her parents.
Astrology and a street cat both play apparently important roles in The First House. The implication of Doshi’s title is that the dissolution of the marriage constitutes an assault on the narrator’s sense of self, that is, her first house. The implication of the street cat who makes herself, later discovered to be himself, at home with the narrator and her daughters eluded me.
Reading fiction about a depressed character can prove difficult. How can a novelist make a character engaging when her identity is being blotted out by depression and loss? While the cause of the depression may be understandable and the cause of the loss is obvious in The First House, the effects of the depression did not compel this reader. In The First House, this was exacerbated by the narrator’s remaining unnamed throughout. I recognized but struggled to maintain interest in the narrator’s depression. Unfortunately, if depression may feel meh, so does a novel in which depression plays an important role.
3.25 stars
I would like to thank NetGalley and Summit Books for access to an advanced reader’s copy of this novel.
In The First House, Avni Doshi autopsies the end of a marriage. The husband tells his wife that ”marriage was impossible for him, not just with me, but as a concept. He realized that he didn’t believe in it, that it was a sham.” The wife, who’s the first person narrator, tells us that ”I felt the ground open up beneath me and I knew there was no end to how far I would fall. . . I didn’t know who I was without him. I could already feel parts of myself rotting. . . What I had believed to be indestructible was gone. The way I had engaged with the world was no longer possible.” The wife struggles to learn how to live without her husband, and how to negotiate her relationships with her pre-teen daughters, her close friend, her older sister, and her parents.
Astrology and a street cat both play apparently important roles in The First House. The implication of Doshi’s title is that the dissolution of the marriage constitutes an assault on the narrator’s sense of self, that is, her first house. The implication of the street cat who makes herself, later discovered to be himself, at home with the narrator and her daughters eluded me.
Reading fiction about a depressed character can prove difficult. How can a novelist make a character engaging when her identity is being blotted out by depression and loss? While the cause of the depression may be understandable and the cause of the loss is obvious in The First House, the effects of the depression did not compel this reader. In The First House, this was exacerbated by the narrator’s remaining unnamed throughout. I recognized but struggled to maintain interest in the narrator’s depression. Unfortunately, if depression may feel meh, so does a novel in which depression plays an important role.
3.25 stars
I would like to thank NetGalley and Summit Books for access to an advanced reader’s copy of this novel.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A woman's husband announces, out of the blue, that he wants a divorce leaving her stunned. She had believed their marriage was a happy one; that they were both content with the status quo but as her husband moves to a hotel she is forced to look again at their relationship.
I struggled to connect with this novel. It sounded very much like something I would be interested in but, I confess, I found a lot of the narrative quite boring and inconclusive. The book really only came alive, for me, right at the end when the previously mentioned cicadas begin to emerge.
The writing is good and I woukd assume that if you are already a fan of Avni Doshi's work you will enjoy this but I found it a little dull and it did not enlighten me as to how to tackle an unhappy family or stale love life.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin for the digital review copy.
I struggled to connect with this novel. It sounded very much like something I would be interested in but, I confess, I found a lot of the narrative quite boring and inconclusive. The book really only came alive, for me, right at the end when the previously mentioned cicadas begin to emerge.
The writing is good and I woukd assume that if you are already a fan of Avni Doshi's work you will enjoy this but I found it a little dull and it did not enlighten me as to how to tackle an unhappy family or stale love life.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin for the digital review copy.
Review of advance copy
Review copy received from Times Reads as an advance reader copy published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books in this stunning vibrant purple cover
A stunningly contemplative meditation on marriage, domestic life and the questions on the unravelling of marital separation from our main character's POV. The story started with the husband wanting a divorce from our narrator with an incredulous stance of monogamy, his reason being their marriage spark is no longer lit but extinguished after thirteen years of life together. Built by resentment and guilt, our narrator whom is a writer tried to dissect each part of their domestic relationship through memories, each conversations, their intimacy, the unhappiness and battlefield of lies, the slow descent of their fraught relationship filled with uncomfortable comments and insults and how it began to feel suffocating. Their two young children caught in between but also still in their naivety taken the news of the divorce quietly in the background.
The writing is haunting though sparse, the sentences are sharp and delicate in its portrayal of motherhood, of women's vulnerability,her dependence on her husband's financial but also her hatred of not being able to be independent most of the time. The husband is equally frustrating with so many secrets, lies and the manipulation he had done to the narrator was maddening, it irked and angered me by how he constantly blaming the wife while he himself deceived her many times in their marital life.
The First House was my first ever Avni Doshi's work and I like this one a lot for how mesmerizing the writing was. I may need to find Burnt Sugar next
A stunningly contemplative meditation on marriage, domestic life and the questions on the unravelling of marital separation from our main character's POV. The story started with the husband wanting a divorce from our narrator with an incredulous stance of monogamy, his reason being their marriage spark is no longer lit but extinguished after thirteen years of life together. Built by resentment and guilt, our narrator whom is a writer tried to dissect each part of their domestic relationship through memories, each conversations, their intimacy, the unhappiness and battlefield of lies, the slow descent of their fraught relationship filled with uncomfortable comments and insults and how it began to feel suffocating. Their two young children caught in between but also still in their naivety taken the news of the divorce quietly in the background.
The writing is haunting though sparse, the sentences are sharp and delicate in its portrayal of motherhood, of women's vulnerability,her dependence on her husband's financial but also her hatred of not being able to be independent most of the time. The husband is equally frustrating with so many secrets, lies and the manipulation he had done to the narrator was maddening, it irked and angered me by how he constantly blaming the wife while he himself deceived her many times in their marital life.
The First House was my first ever Avni Doshi's work and I like this one a lot for how mesmerizing the writing was. I may need to find Burnt Sugar next
July 31, 2026
I loved how this book explores marriage yomanhood without ever reducing either to simple answers. The writing is absolutely gorgeous.
The First House is one of those books that made me think less about the marriage that is ending and more about the woman who has been slowly disappearing inside it.
What stayed with me most was the way Avni Doshi writes about marriage and womanhood without making either of them easy to understand. The husband announcing that he wants a divorce is only the beginning. What follows is a woman looking backwards, through memories of her marriage, motherhood and childhood, and slowly recognising all the ways in which the people closest to her have shaped her sense of self. I couldn’t help but dislike the husband. Not because he leaves, but because of the cowardly manner he seems to approach the end of the marriage. There is something very frustrating about men who emotionally withdraw and then arrive at the final decision as though they have simply discovered the truth, leaving the woman to deal with all the emotional wreckage.
I also loved that the book doesn’t treat motherhood as some uncomplicated, sacred identity. It asks what happens to a woman when being a wife and a mother begins to eclipse the person she was before those roles. The family dynamics add another layer to this, especially the complicated ways parents and siblings can shape us long before we are old enough to understand what they are doing.
More than anything, I loved that The First House isn’t really asking whether a marriage can be saved. It is asking a much more interesting question: what remains of a woman when she finally stops defining herself through the people who have defined her?
Thank you for the copy @harpercollinsin
The First House is one of those books that made me think less about the marriage that is ending and more about the woman who has been slowly disappearing inside it.
What stayed with me most was the way Avni Doshi writes about marriage and womanhood without making either of them easy to understand. The husband announcing that he wants a divorce is only the beginning. What follows is a woman looking backwards, through memories of her marriage, motherhood and childhood, and slowly recognising all the ways in which the people closest to her have shaped her sense of self. I couldn’t help but dislike the husband. Not because he leaves, but because of the cowardly manner he seems to approach the end of the marriage. There is something very frustrating about men who emotionally withdraw and then arrive at the final decision as though they have simply discovered the truth, leaving the woman to deal with all the emotional wreckage.
I also loved that the book doesn’t treat motherhood as some uncomplicated, sacred identity. It asks what happens to a woman when being a wife and a mother begins to eclipse the person she was before those roles. The family dynamics add another layer to this, especially the complicated ways parents and siblings can shape us long before we are old enough to understand what they are doing.
More than anything, I loved that The First House isn’t really asking whether a marriage can be saved. It is asking a much more interesting question: what remains of a woman when she finally stops defining herself through the people who have defined her?
Thank you for the copy @harpercollinsin
September 5, 2026
Is it okay to be angry at a character when you know what they are doing is necessary for the plot to move forward, and yet disagree with their actions so strongly that you have to snap the book shut, take a moment to calm yourself, and then open it again only to be engulfed by those emotions all over again?
I think that is probably a telltale sign that the author has done exactly what she set out to do. She got under my skin, made me question the characters and their choices, and had me reacting to the story instead of simply reading it. I guess I played right into her hands.
Every few pages seemed to break me in a slightly different way. And with a book that begins with a break, the only hope you really hold on to is that the FMC will eventually figure something out and save herself. But getting there feels like moving through every stage of grief, with very little certainty about what will be left standing by the end.
There are so many little things woven into the story that kept hitting in unexpected places. The portion about cicadas, the occasional thoughts around fatherhood and the choices that come with it, the emotional value we attach to a house, and especially the complicated dynamics between the women, whether through sisterhood or motherhood. None of these felt like they were there simply to make a point. They became part of how the characters understood each other, themselves and the lives they had built.
And not everything that happens here feels right. Some choices are frustrating, some relationships are uncomfortable, and some actions had me internally screaming at the pages. But perhaps that is also what made it feel so real. People don't always behave in ways that make sense from the outside, and love, betrayal, family and belonging rarely come in neat little boxes.
I think that is probably a telltale sign that the author has done exactly what she set out to do. She got under my skin, made me question the characters and their choices, and had me reacting to the story instead of simply reading it. I guess I played right into her hands.
Every few pages seemed to break me in a slightly different way. And with a book that begins with a break, the only hope you really hold on to is that the FMC will eventually figure something out and save herself. But getting there feels like moving through every stage of grief, with very little certainty about what will be left standing by the end.
There are so many little things woven into the story that kept hitting in unexpected places. The portion about cicadas, the occasional thoughts around fatherhood and the choices that come with it, the emotional value we attach to a house, and especially the complicated dynamics between the women, whether through sisterhood or motherhood. None of these felt like they were there simply to make a point. They became part of how the characters understood each other, themselves and the lives they had built.
And not everything that happens here feels right. Some choices are frustrating, some relationships are uncomfortable, and some actions had me internally screaming at the pages. But perhaps that is also what made it feel so real. People don't always behave in ways that make sense from the outside, and love, betrayal, family and belonging rarely come in neat little boxes.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
" The First House" was honestly a very heavy read for me. It starts with a husband telling his wife that he wants a divorce, but slowly you realise that this book is not just about a marriage ending.
I was angry while reading this book. There were so many moments where I just felt, why does she have to go through all of this? And I think that’s because this is not just one woman’s story. It reminded me of so many women who keep giving everything to their marriage, keep adjusting and putting everyone before themselves, and still end up getting so little in return.
I really liked the way Avni Doshi has shown a toxic marriage here. She doesn’t make the woman’s feelings simple. She is hurt, angry, confused, attached and sometimes even unsure of what she wants herself. That felt very real to me.
I also liked how mythology, memories and her thoughts were mixed into the story. It made the whole book feel a little strange and haunting, but in a way that suited the story.
What stayed with me was seeing her slowly realise that she has to find herself again. Not as someone’s wife or mother, but as herself.
This book made me angry, sad and uncomfortable at different points, but it also made me think. And honestly, I think that is what I will remember most about it.
I was angry while reading this book. There were so many moments where I just felt, why does she have to go through all of this? And I think that’s because this is not just one woman’s story. It reminded me of so many women who keep giving everything to their marriage, keep adjusting and putting everyone before themselves, and still end up getting so little in return.
I really liked the way Avni Doshi has shown a toxic marriage here. She doesn’t make the woman’s feelings simple. She is hurt, angry, confused, attached and sometimes even unsure of what she wants herself. That felt very real to me.
I also liked how mythology, memories and her thoughts were mixed into the story. It made the whole book feel a little strange and haunting, but in a way that suited the story.
What stayed with me was seeing her slowly realise that she has to find herself again. Not as someone’s wife or mother, but as herself.
This book made me angry, sad and uncomfortable at different points, but it also made me think. And honestly, I think that is what I will remember most about it.
July 29, 2026
The First House does to marriage what Avni Doshi's Booker shortlisted Burnt Sugar did to motherhood. She strips the relationship down to its core until there's nowhere left to hide. This is her second novel, and it's about what's left of a woman once the frame around her life quietly disappears.
The premise is quite simple: a woman believes that her marriage is safe, if not perfect and then her husband walks into their bedroom one fine day and tells her he doesn't want to be married anymore. What follows isn't really a breakup story so much as everything that comes loose once the marriage does. Doshi keeps circling back through the relationship, testing old moments for signs the narrator might have missed, and the effect is that of a woman slowly re-examining her own memory and finding her judgement unreliable.
What really took me aback was how unflinching Doshi is with her narrator. She isn't written to be liked, she's sharp and occasionally unkind, yet that honesty is exactly what makes the book so hard to put down. Doshi doesn't let anyone off easy here, least of all her own protagonist, and there's real courage in writing a woman this unvarnished. What I hated most about the book was the character of the husband, how detesting his behavior is and how easily he has the power to snap out of a marriage, abandoning his kids, while the narrator has to stick through the pretention of being normal for the sake of the children.
There's a whole family orbiting the marriage, too, the narrator's parents still holding tightly to their beliefs and traditions, and an estranged older sister, long cast as the "good daughter," who resurfaces and drags the narrator straight back into old prejudices that she thought she had outgrown.
I'll be honest about the one thing that might not work for everyone. This book hesitates in providing resolution on purpose, it has no interest in assigning blame or handing you a clean verdict on the marriage, the sister, or the parents. If you want to read a prose which is exceptionally written and where the narrator's feelings are aptly captured then The First House is totally something you would enjoy.
The premise is quite simple: a woman believes that her marriage is safe, if not perfect and then her husband walks into their bedroom one fine day and tells her he doesn't want to be married anymore. What follows isn't really a breakup story so much as everything that comes loose once the marriage does. Doshi keeps circling back through the relationship, testing old moments for signs the narrator might have missed, and the effect is that of a woman slowly re-examining her own memory and finding her judgement unreliable.
What really took me aback was how unflinching Doshi is with her narrator. She isn't written to be liked, she's sharp and occasionally unkind, yet that honesty is exactly what makes the book so hard to put down. Doshi doesn't let anyone off easy here, least of all her own protagonist, and there's real courage in writing a woman this unvarnished. What I hated most about the book was the character of the husband, how detesting his behavior is and how easily he has the power to snap out of a marriage, abandoning his kids, while the narrator has to stick through the pretention of being normal for the sake of the children.
There's a whole family orbiting the marriage, too, the narrator's parents still holding tightly to their beliefs and traditions, and an estranged older sister, long cast as the "good daughter," who resurfaces and drags the narrator straight back into old prejudices that she thought she had outgrown.
I'll be honest about the one thing that might not work for everyone. This book hesitates in providing resolution on purpose, it has no interest in assigning blame or handing you a clean verdict on the marriage, the sister, or the parents. If you want to read a prose which is exceptionally written and where the narrator's feelings are aptly captured then The First House is totally something you would enjoy.
August 3, 2026
3.75⭐️
Very few books make me look at the interior life of my own relationships.
If you’ve ever looked at another woman’s relationship and thought, I would never be that person, this is the book.
It’s for the daughters who escaped dysfunctional homes and condescending parents, only to find themselves trapped in a different kind of dependence within a marriage or a relationship, this is the book you need.
The First House opens with a husband asking his wife of thirteen years for a divorce. He might genuinely be one of the most infuriating men I’ve read in fiction. But this isn’t really a book about him. It’s about everything that happens inside the woman after he leaves.
We’ve had plenty of novels about the end of a marriage, but Avni focusses on everything that comes after. The husband sees his wife as lesser simply because she stayed home to raise their daughters, while after the separation, her parents and sisters believe they’re helping, but mostly offer judgment that is neatly wrapped as concern. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion on how she should look, live, and move on.
Doshi is ambitious with her ideas, noticing the smallest of details. While the mythology and recurring motifs work wonderfully, some of the other metaphors don’t quite land, and there are moments where the narrative loses focus. Even so, the novel’s biggest strength lies in showing that after every illusion of rescue falls away, the only person who can rebuild your life is you.
Most of the novel reads like a fever dream. It’s devastating, sometimes deeply triggering, but ultimately hopeful. And if you’ve grown up around Indian families, it’ll probably make you angry—not because the dysfunction is unfamiliar, but because you’ll recognize very well.
Very few books make me look at the interior life of my own relationships.
If you’ve ever looked at another woman’s relationship and thought, I would never be that person, this is the book.
It’s for the daughters who escaped dysfunctional homes and condescending parents, only to find themselves trapped in a different kind of dependence within a marriage or a relationship, this is the book you need.
The First House opens with a husband asking his wife of thirteen years for a divorce. He might genuinely be one of the most infuriating men I’ve read in fiction. But this isn’t really a book about him. It’s about everything that happens inside the woman after he leaves.
We’ve had plenty of novels about the end of a marriage, but Avni focusses on everything that comes after. The husband sees his wife as lesser simply because she stayed home to raise their daughters, while after the separation, her parents and sisters believe they’re helping, but mostly offer judgment that is neatly wrapped as concern. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion on how she should look, live, and move on.
Doshi is ambitious with her ideas, noticing the smallest of details. While the mythology and recurring motifs work wonderfully, some of the other metaphors don’t quite land, and there are moments where the narrative loses focus. Even so, the novel’s biggest strength lies in showing that after every illusion of rescue falls away, the only person who can rebuild your life is you.
Most of the novel reads like a fever dream. It’s devastating, sometimes deeply triggering, but ultimately hopeful. And if you’ve grown up around Indian families, it’ll probably make you angry—not because the dysfunction is unfamiliar, but because you’ll recognize very well.
October 3, 2026
"I married my husband to live in a fairy tale. I imagined us like planets orbiting the sun or gods enacting their myths. Marriage was a solution and I wanted to be dissolved."
I loved Avni Doshi's almost toxic "Girl in the white cotton" for it's relentless picking at scabs of the maternal scars. This book tries to do that with a marriage falling apart and how Indian women, whose family structures are designed to uphold the patriarchy find means to inflict more damage on the woman. A reader from other countries might find this regressive, but then in some ways we know it reflects reality.
When the husband of 13 years announces one day that he wants out the marriage - the protagonist's world falls apart. Where will she and her daughters go? She tries to think back to the clues of her failing as a wife and these sections of her shock and anger and denial are written so well. Then she reaches out to her family, almost estranged due to the marriage, and she finds their support stifling. Her spinster sister, her mother and her father become one unit and she finds herself a victim of judgement and patronizing.
There are references to Diana, the Roman goddess of hunt, who was turned into a nude weathervane and several references to her other forms. It seems like she is talking about the plight of women in a society that can cause the reduction of an goddess to a piece of novelty. And then some more references to Durga towards the end to signify some transformation and hope. The aspects of financial independence and how the daughters view the mother are critical.
In a sense the book was very similar in theme to The witch by Marie Ndiye but the handling is extremely different. I found the book efficiently depressing for the message it was trying to communicate and that is an achievement. The result wasn't as spectacular as the earlier book, but it gives a lot to think about. I hope women across marital statuses (for married - if their marriage is happy or unhappy) - learn to love and prioritize themselves over any other person to overcome centuries of patriarchy.
An important book.
I loved Avni Doshi's almost toxic "Girl in the white cotton" for it's relentless picking at scabs of the maternal scars. This book tries to do that with a marriage falling apart and how Indian women, whose family structures are designed to uphold the patriarchy find means to inflict more damage on the woman. A reader from other countries might find this regressive, but then in some ways we know it reflects reality.
When the husband of 13 years announces one day that he wants out the marriage - the protagonist's world falls apart. Where will she and her daughters go? She tries to think back to the clues of her failing as a wife and these sections of her shock and anger and denial are written so well. Then she reaches out to her family, almost estranged due to the marriage, and she finds their support stifling. Her spinster sister, her mother and her father become one unit and she finds herself a victim of judgement and patronizing.
There are references to Diana, the Roman goddess of hunt, who was turned into a nude weathervane and several references to her other forms. It seems like she is talking about the plight of women in a society that can cause the reduction of an goddess to a piece of novelty. And then some more references to Durga towards the end to signify some transformation and hope. The aspects of financial independence and how the daughters view the mother are critical.
In a sense the book was very similar in theme to The witch by Marie Ndiye but the handling is extremely different. I found the book efficiently depressing for the message it was trying to communicate and that is an achievement. The result wasn't as spectacular as the earlier book, but it gives a lot to think about. I hope women across marital statuses (for married - if their marriage is happy or unhappy) - learn to love and prioritize themselves over any other person to overcome centuries of patriarchy.
An important book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
While the narrator’s self-pitying spiral was annoying, I appreciate the honesty with which this book dealt with the breakdown of a marriage, of a family. That in real life you don’t always achieve some sort of redemption, at least not right away. You can hate your children, your life, yourself, make stupid decisions that make you entirely dependant on others and really that’s just how it is.
Honest, sometimes funny, mostly annoying but Doshi has a lovely way with words.
Honest, sometimes funny, mostly annoying but Doshi has a lovely way with words.
June 30, 2026
*Advanced Reader copy from Penguin* This was interesting! I followed along quite well at the start but the random astrology threw me a little. I didn’t see how it fit into the plot and kind of drew me away from the story. Overall very unique and good book if you’re in the right head space.
October 16, 2026
Have you ever been dismantled, desmembered, dissolved by a relationship? A relationship you yourself chose? Being destroyed spiritually, emotionally and physically by a person you chose to love and who you believed to love you is one of the the worst agonies that anybody can ever experience. Avni Doshi is so so brilliant at getting you right up close to our broken, betrayed, gaslit narrator, I love Doshi's intensity, the brutal exposure of toxic relationships, the biting clarity of her prose. Her characters often say things that should be unsayable, they can often say things that make you gasp and want to avert your gaze, but they are so, so real. This was exquisite, brutal - I couldn't look away.
Patriarchy, the loss of self within a marriage, financial dependence, unhealthy familial dynamics, societal expactations - everything is dissected under Doshi's gaze. Utterly brilliant. I loved the weaving of classical mythology throughout, the use of this and astrology to help our narrator find a path to her rebirth. The imagery of the cicadas bursting out from the ground, shedding their skin and becoming new was vivid and super effective. The arrival of the cat added a brilliant layer to Doshi's characterisation as our narrator first welcomes the female cat, only to be horrified when she sees 'her' licking their testicles. Her inability to see things right in front of her her repeats as an example of how she has purposely blinded herself to obvious truths. Small moments resonated enormously for me, for example when our narrator describes growing to hate the smell of her husband over time - I have had this very experience with someone where once I stopped loving them I finally smelt how they really smelt, which was putrid. I even asked him 'have you always smelt this bad?" and he said 'yes, I was always surprised that you never seemed to mind.' It's a curious but true phenomena.
I could talk for hours about this book, and can't quite it put it into writing so will leave it here with some powerful quotes from the book:
'There was no one I could trust. This was all his fault, all his fault, By destroying the trust between us he had taken from me the ability to have faith in anyone ever again. One more precious thing that I must go on without. In the world, and even in my home, people would forever be strangers.' from now on I would love in half measures. Love with escape hatches, love in two seperate houses, love as a secret I could deny. Conditional love, without trust, armour masquerading as love.'
' I was cleaning the shelves of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom when he entered with a plastic strip in his hands. 'What is this" I asked. 'Doxycycline; he said. 'For what?' He told me about his diagnosis. 'We both have to take this for seven days,' he said. His sister had called in the prescription for both of us, so I didn't have to go to the doctor. My first thought was to laugh. When the meaning of his words settled in me I searched behind my body for the wall. 'Who have you been sleeping with?' 'No-one. I must have had it for a long time.' 'How did you find out?' I asked. 'Why did you get checked now?'...I toom the antibiotics he have me and, a wek later I went to the doctor and told her the story. She did a full STD panel and everything was negative. I wept in her office when I heard the results. I asked her if it was possible for the disease to be dormant for so long. She said it was. I waited for her to say more, to answer the questions within the one I had asked. Was it probable that he had contracted the disease years ago? Was it likely? Should I believe him?'
'If I had allowed myself to know, to think about the reality of my marriage - if I had considered what this story meant about my husband, about his capacity for lies, for subterfuge, I would not have stayed with him. Would I?...Back then I could not have known the things I knew now, because I had cut myself off from the kind of knowing requred to defend myself. Loving him meant now knowing to the best of my ability. And do I did not know, even if it was at the cost of myself, even though not knowing was against myself. But the knowledge still seeped in. It was all around me. It whispered when I was alone. It circled around the birth charts and conjured Diana in the garden. it narrated my dreams. Still, I did not trust a knowledge I could not name. I ignored that knowing and abandoned my body, which was seeking revelation. Over time, my body became a relic and its speech became a dead language. Could I blame myself for not wanting to know?...Knowing certain things would have destroyed me. By being born, I was in a pact with the world to not know, to never know. The act of not knowing over time became natural.'
'Wasn't I a little girl too? I had children, perhaps, a house, a marriage, the trappings of adulthood. But I had no income of my own, no idea how the house I lived in was run, no bank account under my own control. I could not even get to the grocery store without assistance, and could basically drown in a bathtub.'
'I aksed Sama to meet me at a cafe for breakfast...She asked me how I was doing. 'I feel better,' I said, 'A little less afraid. It's freeing.'...'So, you have no fears?' she asked, raising an eyebrow. 'Oh no, of course I do. I'm afraid about food, money, the children. I'm afraid about one day dying without a witness. But they're all concrete things. Before i had a different type of fear.' I tried to explain but it was difficult to put into words, the scattered, unsettled, shapeshifting panic, a pervasive, stalking worry I had felt around my ex-husband. I told her that I had been freed from other fears too. Social ostracization for one. No longer a married woman, I was a kind of social outcat, a form freed from its function...There was nowhere I was required...I existed only for my own pleasure.'
Patriarchy, the loss of self within a marriage, financial dependence, unhealthy familial dynamics, societal expactations - everything is dissected under Doshi's gaze. Utterly brilliant. I loved the weaving of classical mythology throughout, the use of this and astrology to help our narrator find a path to her rebirth. The imagery of the cicadas bursting out from the ground, shedding their skin and becoming new was vivid and super effective. The arrival of the cat added a brilliant layer to Doshi's characterisation as our narrator first welcomes the female cat, only to be horrified when she sees 'her' licking their testicles. Her inability to see things right in front of her her repeats as an example of how she has purposely blinded herself to obvious truths. Small moments resonated enormously for me, for example when our narrator describes growing to hate the smell of her husband over time - I have had this very experience with someone where once I stopped loving them I finally smelt how they really smelt, which was putrid. I even asked him 'have you always smelt this bad?" and he said 'yes, I was always surprised that you never seemed to mind.' It's a curious but true phenomena.
I could talk for hours about this book, and can't quite it put it into writing so will leave it here with some powerful quotes from the book:
'There was no one I could trust. This was all his fault, all his fault, By destroying the trust between us he had taken from me the ability to have faith in anyone ever again. One more precious thing that I must go on without. In the world, and even in my home, people would forever be strangers.' from now on I would love in half measures. Love with escape hatches, love in two seperate houses, love as a secret I could deny. Conditional love, without trust, armour masquerading as love.'
' I was cleaning the shelves of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom when he entered with a plastic strip in his hands. 'What is this" I asked. 'Doxycycline; he said. 'For what?' He told me about his diagnosis. 'We both have to take this for seven days,' he said. His sister had called in the prescription for both of us, so I didn't have to go to the doctor. My first thought was to laugh. When the meaning of his words settled in me I searched behind my body for the wall. 'Who have you been sleeping with?' 'No-one. I must have had it for a long time.' 'How did you find out?' I asked. 'Why did you get checked now?'...I toom the antibiotics he have me and, a wek later I went to the doctor and told her the story. She did a full STD panel and everything was negative. I wept in her office when I heard the results. I asked her if it was possible for the disease to be dormant for so long. She said it was. I waited for her to say more, to answer the questions within the one I had asked. Was it probable that he had contracted the disease years ago? Was it likely? Should I believe him?'
'If I had allowed myself to know, to think about the reality of my marriage - if I had considered what this story meant about my husband, about his capacity for lies, for subterfuge, I would not have stayed with him. Would I?...Back then I could not have known the things I knew now, because I had cut myself off from the kind of knowing requred to defend myself. Loving him meant now knowing to the best of my ability. And do I did not know, even if it was at the cost of myself, even though not knowing was against myself. But the knowledge still seeped in. It was all around me. It whispered when I was alone. It circled around the birth charts and conjured Diana in the garden. it narrated my dreams. Still, I did not trust a knowledge I could not name. I ignored that knowing and abandoned my body, which was seeking revelation. Over time, my body became a relic and its speech became a dead language. Could I blame myself for not wanting to know?...Knowing certain things would have destroyed me. By being born, I was in a pact with the world to not know, to never know. The act of not knowing over time became natural.'
'Wasn't I a little girl too? I had children, perhaps, a house, a marriage, the trappings of adulthood. But I had no income of my own, no idea how the house I lived in was run, no bank account under my own control. I could not even get to the grocery store without assistance, and could basically drown in a bathtub.'
'I aksed Sama to meet me at a cafe for breakfast...She asked me how I was doing. 'I feel better,' I said, 'A little less afraid. It's freeing.'...'So, you have no fears?' she asked, raising an eyebrow. 'Oh no, of course I do. I'm afraid about food, money, the children. I'm afraid about one day dying without a witness. But they're all concrete things. Before i had a different type of fear.' I tried to explain but it was difficult to put into words, the scattered, unsettled, shapeshifting panic, a pervasive, stalking worry I had felt around my ex-husband. I told her that I had been freed from other fears too. Social ostracization for one. No longer a married woman, I was a kind of social outcat, a form freed from its function...There was nowhere I was required...I existed only for my own pleasure.'
July 26, 2026
”When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared for thirteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married any more, I reach for my neck. My head is missing. My husband has cut it off surreptitiously. The air in the room thins as he fills it with justifications, all the ways he is unhappy, the reasons why we should not stay together. I tell him to stop, stop talking, can’t he see that I can no longer breathe?”
3.5 ⭐️ | The First House is less a story about divorce than it is about what happens after the life you built suddenly stops feeling like your own, stops being the only life you recognize and understand, the feeling of having the rug ripped out from under you with what feels like zero warning. From its unforgettable opening line(s), Avni Doshi immediately drops readers into the disorienting aftermath of a marriage ending, and the novel spends its time examining grief, identity, motherhood, and the ways women can lose themselves inside the roles they’re expected or forced to play.
”What I had believed to be indestructible was gone. The way I had engaged with the world was no longer possible. The children came into the room, already in their pyjamas, and caught me talking to myself. They couldn't understand that I was meeting myself as someone new.”
Doshi’s writing is undoubtedly the highlight. Her prose is elegant, sharp, and deeply observant, capturing the strange rhythm of everyday life after a major loss. The novel excels at portraying the emotional labor placed on women, the financial and psychological uncertainty that follows separation, and the complicated dynamics of family that resurface when everything begins to unravel. I also appreciated the recurring symbolism and the way mythology, astrology, and inherited fears were woven throughout the story without overshadowing the emotional center of the novel.
Where the book lost me was in its emotional distance. While I admired the narrator’s introspection, I never felt fully connected to her or many of the supporting relationships. Maybe it’s because this book is the antithesis of my current lived experience, but the shifts between present and past felt abrupt, making it difficult to stay grounded in the narrative, and a few story threads (particularly involving her family) felt underdeveloped compared to the attention given to her marriage. I kept wanting just a little more depth to make the emotional payoff hit harder in the end.
This is a quiet, contemplative novel that prioritizes character over plot, so readers looking for something more fast paced or full of dramatic twists may find it too restrained. But if you enjoy literary fiction that carefully dissects marriage, motherhood, identity, and the complicated process of rebuilding yourself after heartbreak, The First House offers plenty to reflect on. It didn’t completely captivate me, but I admired its intelligence, beautiful writing, and honest portrayal of starting over when the future suddenly looks nothing like you imagined.
A big thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster | S&S/Summit Books for this eARC!
3.5 ⭐️ | The First House is less a story about divorce than it is about what happens after the life you built suddenly stops feeling like your own, stops being the only life you recognize and understand, the feeling of having the rug ripped out from under you with what feels like zero warning. From its unforgettable opening line(s), Avni Doshi immediately drops readers into the disorienting aftermath of a marriage ending, and the novel spends its time examining grief, identity, motherhood, and the ways women can lose themselves inside the roles they’re expected or forced to play.
”What I had believed to be indestructible was gone. The way I had engaged with the world was no longer possible. The children came into the room, already in their pyjamas, and caught me talking to myself. They couldn't understand that I was meeting myself as someone new.”
Doshi’s writing is undoubtedly the highlight. Her prose is elegant, sharp, and deeply observant, capturing the strange rhythm of everyday life after a major loss. The novel excels at portraying the emotional labor placed on women, the financial and psychological uncertainty that follows separation, and the complicated dynamics of family that resurface when everything begins to unravel. I also appreciated the recurring symbolism and the way mythology, astrology, and inherited fears were woven throughout the story without overshadowing the emotional center of the novel.
Where the book lost me was in its emotional distance. While I admired the narrator’s introspection, I never felt fully connected to her or many of the supporting relationships. Maybe it’s because this book is the antithesis of my current lived experience, but the shifts between present and past felt abrupt, making it difficult to stay grounded in the narrative, and a few story threads (particularly involving her family) felt underdeveloped compared to the attention given to her marriage. I kept wanting just a little more depth to make the emotional payoff hit harder in the end.
This is a quiet, contemplative novel that prioritizes character over plot, so readers looking for something more fast paced or full of dramatic twists may find it too restrained. But if you enjoy literary fiction that carefully dissects marriage, motherhood, identity, and the complicated process of rebuilding yourself after heartbreak, The First House offers plenty to reflect on. It didn’t completely captivate me, but I admired its intelligence, beautiful writing, and honest portrayal of starting over when the future suddenly looks nothing like you imagined.
A big thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster | S&S/Summit Books for this eARC!
October 17, 2026
Esta é a história da metamorfose de uma mulher que, tal como as cigarras, viveu dentro de um casulo, alheada do mundo, fechada numa fantasia ou apenas existindo numa realidade que não a incomodava, em que não tinha de se chatear com desejos pessoais ou com a sua própria existência. Hibernava algures dentro da própria cabeça, enquanto a realidade acontecia algures à sua volta.
Não estão a perceber nada, não é?
A história começa assim: “Quando o meu marido entra no quarto que partilhámos durante treze anos e me diz que não quer continuar casado, levo a mão ao pescoço. Falta-me a cabeça. O meu marido cortou-a sub-repticiamente.”
Partindo deste ponto, percebemos que tudo estava errado desde o início nesta história, e ela sabia-o, mas resolveu apagar, esquecer, fazer de conta que não era verdade, daí esta ideia de que o casamento foi como o ciclo das cigarras que estão no seu próprio jardim à espera da hora de sair.
A primeira parte é a descrição da relação com o marido ao longo do tempo, um completo escroto, e da tomada de consciência do que estava à frente do nariz dela. A segunda parte é o reencontro com a família, que aparece para a ajudar a sair do buraco. E aqui as coisas tornam-se, de facto, interessantes, porque a família é também ela aparentemente disfuncional.
Pelo meio, temos referências à astrologia e aos mapas astrais, e a deusas da mitologia, em especial à deusa Diana e a uma recriação específica de um artista americano. A simbologia é interessante e relaciona-se com a história desta protagonista, pelo que sinto que enriquece a narrativa. Também gosto da história do gato, que era uma gata até não ser e, depois, da forma como é visto, que também muda. 👀
Acho curiosa e até mordaz a forma como ela retrata o marido, o pai e a forma como as mulheres são oprimidas ao longo da vida no seio das suas famílias. Retiro desta história, sobretudo, a força e a coragem necessárias para nos impormos perante quem quer definir a nossa vida à mercê dos seus próprios ideais. O renascimento acontece quando conseguimos isso, por mais que custe, e, por fim, fica a importância da independência: nunca nos tornarmos dependentes financeiramente de um homem.
É uma narrativa curta, de leitura bastante fluida e uma abordagem original. Gosto bastante.
Não estão a perceber nada, não é?
A história começa assim: “Quando o meu marido entra no quarto que partilhámos durante treze anos e me diz que não quer continuar casado, levo a mão ao pescoço. Falta-me a cabeça. O meu marido cortou-a sub-repticiamente.”
Partindo deste ponto, percebemos que tudo estava errado desde o início nesta história, e ela sabia-o, mas resolveu apagar, esquecer, fazer de conta que não era verdade, daí esta ideia de que o casamento foi como o ciclo das cigarras que estão no seu próprio jardim à espera da hora de sair.
A primeira parte é a descrição da relação com o marido ao longo do tempo, um completo escroto, e da tomada de consciência do que estava à frente do nariz dela. A segunda parte é o reencontro com a família, que aparece para a ajudar a sair do buraco. E aqui as coisas tornam-se, de facto, interessantes, porque a família é também ela aparentemente disfuncional.
Pelo meio, temos referências à astrologia e aos mapas astrais, e a deusas da mitologia, em especial à deusa Diana e a uma recriação específica de um artista americano. A simbologia é interessante e relaciona-se com a história desta protagonista, pelo que sinto que enriquece a narrativa. Também gosto da história do gato, que era uma gata até não ser e, depois, da forma como é visto, que também muda. 👀
Acho curiosa e até mordaz a forma como ela retrata o marido, o pai e a forma como as mulheres são oprimidas ao longo da vida no seio das suas famílias. Retiro desta história, sobretudo, a força e a coragem necessárias para nos impormos perante quem quer definir a nossa vida à mercê dos seus próprios ideais. O renascimento acontece quando conseguimos isso, por mais que custe, e, por fim, fica a importância da independência: nunca nos tornarmos dependentes financeiramente de um homem.
É uma narrativa curta, de leitura bastante fluida e uma abordagem original. Gosto bastante.
April 11, 2026
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC of The First House in exchange for my honest review.
‘The luckiest women were the ones who were forgotten. They were the ones who made it out alive. I had a chance to be one of them, forgotten, past her prime, beyond the age of desire. My life would begin today.’
The main themes of The First House could be described as reflection, the quiet demise of marriage, finding yourself after marriage and children. The book opens with a husband telling his wife he wants a divorce. What ensues is a story about the emotional aftermath from the wife’s perspective. She reflects on earlier memories of her husband and herself. There are also glimpses of her family dynamic giving the reader a little idea of what the FMC childhood was like.
The story starts off at a steady pace, but towards the middle of the book the pace starts to slow down. Sometimes I also did not realize I was reading about a flashback until halfway through the flashback.
I do not feel that I was the intended audience for this book, but I found bits and pieces of the FMC that I could relate to. This story is for recent divorcees. This story is for mothers who feel lost in motherhood. This story is for those who want to find themselves again. Overall I think the story was beautifully written.
‘The luckiest women were the ones who were forgotten. They were the ones who made it out alive. I had a chance to be one of them, forgotten, past her prime, beyond the age of desire. My life would begin today.’
The main themes of The First House could be described as reflection, the quiet demise of marriage, finding yourself after marriage and children. The book opens with a husband telling his wife he wants a divorce. What ensues is a story about the emotional aftermath from the wife’s perspective. She reflects on earlier memories of her husband and herself. There are also glimpses of her family dynamic giving the reader a little idea of what the FMC childhood was like.
The story starts off at a steady pace, but towards the middle of the book the pace starts to slow down. Sometimes I also did not realize I was reading about a flashback until halfway through the flashback.
I do not feel that I was the intended audience for this book, but I found bits and pieces of the FMC that I could relate to. This story is for recent divorcees. This story is for mothers who feel lost in motherhood. This story is for those who want to find themselves again. Overall I think the story was beautifully written.
October 20, 2026
Big disappointment. I was looking for the edginess, the depth, the daring that I found in her previous book.
I could not connect with the protagonist. Although the book tries to touch on what it means to be a woman, daughter, mother, wife, and friend, it never really grasps the point. Instead, it turns into an American suburban wife crisis, which unfortunately felt a bit shallow.
Within this shallow setup, however, Avni Doshi reminds you here and there of her skills as a writer. My expectations were high after Burnt Sugar. What I found was not even close to that.
I could not connect with the protagonist. Although the book tries to touch on what it means to be a woman, daughter, mother, wife, and friend, it never really grasps the point. Instead, it turns into an American suburban wife crisis, which unfortunately felt a bit shallow.
Within this shallow setup, however, Avni Doshi reminds you here and there of her skills as a writer. My expectations were high after Burnt Sugar. What I found was not even close to that.
July 23, 2026
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 😲
The book(ar least the 1st half) is about our narrator trying to come to terms with this. As through the occasional flash back she realises her "perfect little life" was never as good as she thought.
I liked this half, it will resonate with any one who has been in that kind of situation themselves, the red flags that were shot down at the time suddenly being realised the struggle with what to tell the kids...
The 2nd though puts the husband more into the back ground as mother, father and elder sister enter. The tense family relationship is perhaps best summed up by mother telling her daughter that she has hyped up their marriage as the perfect couple and by divorcing she is embarrassing her 🙈
This part didn't quite hit with the same emotional strength to me but was still a well told story and again. There is probably people who will relate to this
Pacing wise it doee start a bit slow as husband continues to awkwardly live with them at first but it does pick up the pace after he declares he is moving out
Overall I was perhaos not the target audience for this but its still a story I enjoyed that will hit hard for many,
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 😲
The book(ar least the 1st half) is about our narrator trying to come to terms with this. As through the occasional flash back she realises her "perfect little life" was never as good as she thought.
I liked this half, it will resonate with any one who has been in that kind of situation themselves, the red flags that were shot down at the time suddenly being realised the struggle with what to tell the kids...
The 2nd though puts the husband more into the back ground as mother, father and elder sister enter. The tense family relationship is perhaps best summed up by mother telling her daughter that she has hyped up their marriage as the perfect couple and by divorcing she is embarrassing her 🙈
This part didn't quite hit with the same emotional strength to me but was still a well told story and again. There is probably people who will relate to this
Pacing wise it doee start a bit slow as husband continues to awkwardly live with them at first but it does pick up the pace after he declares he is moving out
Overall I was perhaos not the target audience for this but its still a story I enjoyed that will hit hard for many,
September 30, 2026
She’s a solid writer. This reminded me a bit of Days of Abandonment, but a much less intense, paired back version, and I have to admit I found myself bored.
July 27, 2026
Meandered quite a bit with much introspection that gave good insight into the unraveling of the main character, although it became overbearing at times. The character resolution is confusing and the distinction between protagonist and antagonist became blurry - or maybe that was the intention. I started to root against her, especially when you see the effect on her two daughters, but I understand the arc that portion highlights. At the end I have to agree with her husband - she spends too much time in her head.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
// the first house feels like a book about unlearning: unlearning the husband as the centre of a woman’s life, unlearning the idea that motherhood belongs primarily to women, unlearning what love is supposed to look like, and finally confronting the terrifying possibility of knowing oneself outside all of it. the book asks uncomfortable questions about female desire and the performance of marriage—the idea that a woman must make herself smaller, more forgiving and more sacrificial to keep a family intact//
Review of advance copy
“A minor disobedience.”
This is a brilliant meditation on marriage, motherhood, grief, identity, change, relationships, and meaning making. It’s a delicately crafted world and the author presents us some wonderful prose, laden with allusions and insights, while simultaneously leaving a lot of room for both, the reader and the protagonist, to breathe. Recommended reading!
#jungian fiction
This is a brilliant meditation on marriage, motherhood, grief, identity, change, relationships, and meaning making. It’s a delicately crafted world and the author presents us some wonderful prose, laden with allusions and insights, while simultaneously leaving a lot of room for both, the reader and the protagonist, to breathe. Recommended reading!
#jungian fiction
June 19, 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley.
This is a story of a marriage unraveling. It opens with the narrator’s husband announcing he wants a divorce. The narrator imagines her head decapitated and in his hands, setting the tone for everything that follows. From there, we watch her come undone, piece by piece, as the life she thought was solid begins to dissolve.
I really loved this. Stories about marriages and families always pull me in, and this one felt especially powerful. It’s rich with symbolism, with cicadas threading through as a symbol of transformation and rebirth, and the goddess Diana as a figure of feminine power. This gave the novel a dreamlike, almost mythic quality.
What stood out to me most is the idea that the narrator isn’t just processing the end of her marriage. She’s reexamining her entire understanding of love, identity, and the stories she told herself to make sense of her life. It’s disorienting in a way that feels very intentional.
This book is dark, intense, and quietly hypnotic. It’s a portrait of a woman coming apart, and maybe, at the same time, becoming something new.
This is a story of a marriage unraveling. It opens with the narrator’s husband announcing he wants a divorce. The narrator imagines her head decapitated and in his hands, setting the tone for everything that follows. From there, we watch her come undone, piece by piece, as the life she thought was solid begins to dissolve.
I really loved this. Stories about marriages and families always pull me in, and this one felt especially powerful. It’s rich with symbolism, with cicadas threading through as a symbol of transformation and rebirth, and the goddess Diana as a figure of feminine power. This gave the novel a dreamlike, almost mythic quality.
What stood out to me most is the idea that the narrator isn’t just processing the end of her marriage. She’s reexamining her entire understanding of love, identity, and the stories she told herself to make sense of her life. It’s disorienting in a way that feels very intentional.
This book is dark, intense, and quietly hypnotic. It’s a portrait of a woman coming apart, and maybe, at the same time, becoming something new.
April 15, 2026
An exploration of how others can shape who we are and hide our true identities from even ourselves.
It opens with her husband announcing he is leaving her, which is a shock, but then she cycles through the emotions following the loss and starts to understand how he has made her smaller.
We also see how her family, in a more well intentioned we’ll have also limited her. Both her parents and her sister have left very different marks which takes her a while to understand.
This is brought cleverly together by the regular invoking of cicadas, two kinds of which appear after long cycles, with both coinciding for this story, a rare event showing how hard it can be to break free of negative family and marital bounds at the same time.
The writing is wonderful, and like with burnt sugar there are busy as l metaphors that I’ll carry with me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the arc
It opens with her husband announcing he is leaving her, which is a shock, but then she cycles through the emotions following the loss and starts to understand how he has made her smaller.
We also see how her family, in a more well intentioned we’ll have also limited her. Both her parents and her sister have left very different marks which takes her a while to understand.
This is brought cleverly together by the regular invoking of cicadas, two kinds of which appear after long cycles, with both coinciding for this story, a rare event showing how hard it can be to break free of negative family and marital bounds at the same time.
The writing is wonderful, and like with burnt sugar there are busy as l metaphors that I’ll carry with me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the arc
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
But the knowledge still seeped in. It was all around me. It whispered when I was alone. It circled around the birth charts and conjured Diana in the garden. It narrated my dreams. Still, I did not trust a knowledge I could not name. I ignored that knowing and abandoned my body, which was seeking revelation. Over time, my body became a relic and its speech became a dead language. A silent object in a museum that other people ’s voices collided against. A statue turning in the wind, one way, and then the other, always at the mercy and pleasure of another.
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.
My thanks to Hamish Hamilton for an ARC via NetGalley
The patterns within these ritals and myths always led me back to my own experience, revealing something I had never been able to grasp at the centre of myself. They offered me a way of moving around it, writing around it, glancing only through the corners of my eyes, and I could almost trace its shape, almost feel the vibration of its surface. Sometimes it seemed to whisper to me and I had a feeling that the thing I was circling was circling me, too. Sometimes I noticed the cold shadow on my skin, and I knew I was getting closer.
August 5, 2026
This is the kind of book that unfolds slowly, not all at once.
Firstly, thank you Summit Books for this early arc!
The story opens with a gut-punch of a line - her husband walks into the bedroom they've shared for thirteen years and tells her he doesn't want to be married anymore.
The story reads like a diary entry.. intimate, unguarded, like you are reading someone's private thoughts. At the center is a marriage coming apart, unravelling quietly. She is left in the house they built together, raising their two young daughters alone, trying to figure out how to be a mother and a whole person at the same time. Doshi writes very deeply about the scars of leaving of a shared home so well - the separation of things you bought together, that hold memories of two people, now split at a crossroads. And that feeling after, of being a new person with a void you don't know how to fill, because for so long you weren't one person, you were half of a unit. When that bond comes undone, a part of you stays missing.
What got me was how she describes the husband. He is never cartoonishly awful. According to her, he is self-centered, controlling, a gaslighter, always on the defense, always playing mind games in ways that are hard to point at directly. The credit card that keeps getting denied. Never being allowed to see the statements. No joint account. His sister brought in to "guide" her on how to be careful with money, even her own skincare purchases. It is the kind of quiet control that's easy to miss from the outside and impossible to escape from the inside.
Doshi also threads in astrology - Saturn, or Shani, sitting in the first house of her birth chart, and honestly, I wish she would explained a bit more of what that actually means for readers who don't follow horoscopes, and why it's such a big deal in Indian communities. Because it carries real weight in the story and some readers might miss it.
The mythology woven through is one of my favorite parts - the statue of Diana that keeps reappearing, in a neighbor's yard, in a museum she saw as a kid, and her tie to Troy, to Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter for favorable winds. It gives the whole book this mythic undertone, like her story is echoing something ancient and repeating.
And then there's her own childhood - a father with a heavy ego, a home that felt more like a prison than a home, a family where the unspoken rule was to avoid the problem instead of facing it, to just avoid water instead of learn how to swim. Physically and emotionally abusive, dysfunctional in ways she spends the book untangling.
I think, at one moment in the book when she visits her parent's house, she left early because I think she saw too much of her mother in herself, and too much of her father in her husband. She's also estranged from her older sister, long cast as the "perfect daughter" who never left home and never approved of her husband - another quiet thread of comparison and old wounds running underneath everything.
Small things carry so much meaning here too. Throughout the book, you will read about the cicadas that show up again and again, almost like a heartbeat under the story.
I was relieved her family showed up for her when her husband left... dropping off groceries, checking in, being present. And I loved that in the middle of all this heartbreak, she finds a stray cat who loves her, no conditions attached. Plus, her cousin. She is the pulse of the narrator! And a true friend.
What's also interesting is that none of the characters are ever given names, except, well, for her cousin. He's just "the husband," she's "the wife," her family are "the mother," "the father," "the sister." At first I thought it might be because the book reads like a diary.. intimate, unguarded, the way you would write about people in your own journal without needing to name them. But the more I sat with it, I think it's doing something more too. Stripping the names away makes everyone feel less like specific people and more like roles being repeated, patterns passed down.
The ending gave me exactly what I wanted. Facing the fear she had carried her whole life - a prophecy from childhood that her family would die in water - she takes her daughters to the Kumbh Mela in India and dips her head into the river anyway.
Full circle, and so well earned.
A slow, honest read about marriage, inheritance, and finally facing the things you have spent your whole life avoiding.
Firstly, thank you Summit Books for this early arc!
The story opens with a gut-punch of a line - her husband walks into the bedroom they've shared for thirteen years and tells her he doesn't want to be married anymore.
The story reads like a diary entry.. intimate, unguarded, like you are reading someone's private thoughts. At the center is a marriage coming apart, unravelling quietly. She is left in the house they built together, raising their two young daughters alone, trying to figure out how to be a mother and a whole person at the same time. Doshi writes very deeply about the scars of leaving of a shared home so well - the separation of things you bought together, that hold memories of two people, now split at a crossroads. And that feeling after, of being a new person with a void you don't know how to fill, because for so long you weren't one person, you were half of a unit. When that bond comes undone, a part of you stays missing.
What got me was how she describes the husband. He is never cartoonishly awful. According to her, he is self-centered, controlling, a gaslighter, always on the defense, always playing mind games in ways that are hard to point at directly. The credit card that keeps getting denied. Never being allowed to see the statements. No joint account. His sister brought in to "guide" her on how to be careful with money, even her own skincare purchases. It is the kind of quiet control that's easy to miss from the outside and impossible to escape from the inside.
Doshi also threads in astrology - Saturn, or Shani, sitting in the first house of her birth chart, and honestly, I wish she would explained a bit more of what that actually means for readers who don't follow horoscopes, and why it's such a big deal in Indian communities. Because it carries real weight in the story and some readers might miss it.
The mythology woven through is one of my favorite parts - the statue of Diana that keeps reappearing, in a neighbor's yard, in a museum she saw as a kid, and her tie to Troy, to Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter for favorable winds. It gives the whole book this mythic undertone, like her story is echoing something ancient and repeating.
And then there's her own childhood - a father with a heavy ego, a home that felt more like a prison than a home, a family where the unspoken rule was to avoid the problem instead of facing it, to just avoid water instead of learn how to swim. Physically and emotionally abusive, dysfunctional in ways she spends the book untangling.
I think, at one moment in the book when she visits her parent's house, she left early because I think she saw too much of her mother in herself, and too much of her father in her husband. She's also estranged from her older sister, long cast as the "perfect daughter" who never left home and never approved of her husband - another quiet thread of comparison and old wounds running underneath everything.
Small things carry so much meaning here too. Throughout the book, you will read about the cicadas that show up again and again, almost like a heartbeat under the story.
I was relieved her family showed up for her when her husband left... dropping off groceries, checking in, being present. And I loved that in the middle of all this heartbreak, she finds a stray cat who loves her, no conditions attached. Plus, her cousin. She is the pulse of the narrator! And a true friend.
What's also interesting is that none of the characters are ever given names, except, well, for her cousin. He's just "the husband," she's "the wife," her family are "the mother," "the father," "the sister." At first I thought it might be because the book reads like a diary.. intimate, unguarded, the way you would write about people in your own journal without needing to name them. But the more I sat with it, I think it's doing something more too. Stripping the names away makes everyone feel less like specific people and more like roles being repeated, patterns passed down.
The ending gave me exactly what I wanted. Facing the fear she had carried her whole life - a prophecy from childhood that her family would die in water - she takes her daughters to the Kumbh Mela in India and dips her head into the river anyway.
Full circle, and so well earned.
A slow, honest read about marriage, inheritance, and finally facing the things you have spent your whole life avoiding.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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