Small Days and Nights

by Tishani Doshi Narrated by Siiri Scott

Overview

Escaping her failing marriage in the United States, Grace Marisola has returned to Pondicherry to cremate her mother. Once there, she receives an unexpected inheritance-a property on the isolated beaches south of Madras-and discovers a sister: Lucia, four years older, who has spent her life in a residential facility.



Settling into the pink house on its spit of wild beach, Grace builds a new and precarious life with Lucia, the village housekeeper Mallika, the drily witty Auntie Kavitha, and an ever-multiplying band of dogs, led by the golden Raja. In the lush wilderness of Paramankeni, with its vacant bus stops colonized by flying foxes, its temples shielded by canopies of teak and tamarind, Grace feels that she has come to the very end of the world. But her attempts to leave her old self behind prove first a struggle, then a strain, as she discovers the chaos, tenderness, fury, and bewilderment of life with Lucia.



In fierce, lyrical prose, Doshi presents an unflinching portrait of contemporary India, exploring the tensions between urban and rural life, modernity and tradition, duty and freedom. Luminous, funny, surprising, and heartbreaking, Small Days and Nights is a story of the ties that bind, the secrets we bury, and the sacrifices we make to forge lives that have meaning.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Aditi Sriram

As the title suggests, the story builds, one daily routine, one daily detail at a time. But Doshi treats this everydayness like the beach on which Grace lives: as a back-and-forth proposition, constantly in motion, always shifting slightly…Small Days and Nights thrives on these pushes and pulls, allowing opposites to coexist…What work best are the book's language and the evocation of South India…And, most impressively, [Doshi's] focus never wavers. Starting with a corpse in a freezer box, Small Days and Nights turns a fragmented family into an overflowing one. An estranged father and deceased mother end up creating a legacy that includes a house, sisters, husbands and lovers, a village headman and his wife and those ever-breeding dogs—and seemingly without anything specific happening.

Maaza Mengiste

"Every sentence in this achingly beautiful book carries multiple meanings that resonate across the pages. Tishani Doshi uses language like a blade, cutting through our defenses to illuminate what it means to love, and forgive, and truly exist in the life we have."

Guardian - Bidisha

"A shattering study of disaffection and belonging…[A] concise novel of staggering depth…[D]isturbing, deep and utterly extraordinary."

Nayomi Munaweera

"A beautiful gem of a book full of heartbreak and joy. A deep exploration of what it is to be within family and what it is to occupy your own skin and the ebb and flow between the two."

Times (UK) - Phil Baker

"Radiantly written…this superb novel from Doshi ranges over family secrets, trying to do the right thing, and the sheer contingency of life in all its richness and uncertainty."

Gary Shteyngart

"Tishani Doshi brings all her skills as one of the world’s best poets to this lovely, beguiling, brilliant novel."

Library Journal

11/01/2019

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

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

Doshi's novel is moving and poetic, and narrator Siiri Scott excels with its well-developed dialogue. Following a divorce, Grace Marisola finds herself leaving the U.S. and returning to Pondicherry, India, to cremate her mother and settle her estate. There she discovers she has an older sister who has been institutionalized. Grace's journey is compelling and entertaining as she navigates her new family—her sister, Lucia, and a slew of supporting characters—and her new life. Scott's narration is pitch-perfect as the story explores the complexities of truth, culture, family, and the lives we build in the face of change and uncertainty. A beautifully written and narrated story. K.S.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2019-10-28
Grace Marisola returns to India from the U.S. upon her mother's death, leaving behind a crumbling marriage, only to discover that her mother has left her a beach house in Madras—and, even more surprisingly, that she has a sister she never knew about, Lucia, who has Down syndrome.

Grace moves Lucia from the institution their mother secretly funded to care for girls with special needs to the secluded beach house she's inherited. Here, on the outskirts of rural life, she tries to cultivate a sibling bond. The novel unfolds from Grace's first-person perspective and in the present tense, which can sometimes be cumbersome but feels poignant here for the way it creates immediacy in an otherwise meandering tale. Grace's lonely childhood is newly refracted by Lucia's existence; she recalls her parents' story, examining how a couple might decide to allow an institution to raise one of their children and the consequences of that decision on their marriage and the child they kept. Grace's own marriage is failing because she doesn't want children and her husband does. Feelings of alienation stemming from her childhood and worry about the fate of the planet, among other things, have led her to choose a life at the edge of the world. She makes her own nuclear family with Lucia and a pack of energetic dogs, a precarious existence at best. Doshi (Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, 2017, etc.) is excellent at conjuring atmosphere, particularly a sense of menace regarding the dangers that confront women in both rural and cosmopolitan India. She needs few words to breathe life into her characters and setting, the stars of the story. Grace can be judgmental and mean, but Doshi has also endowed her with intelligence and sensitivity. All of these qualities make Grace a worthy prism for the profound questions of what it means to belong to a family and a community.

This exploration of loneliness is a feat of lyricism.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176150896
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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