A caustic and provocative telling of a toxic mother-daughter relationship and how they navigate an Alzheimer's diagnosis. Set in Pune.

I must admit that I finished this book primarily because it was short. While the writing style and premise intrigued me at the beginning, as the story wound on the main character just got more and more annoying to me. I feel like the author was trying to embody the ~distant artist~ vibe, which can work in some iterations, but here I found it so odd. She is an artist and clearly thinks abt her practice and emotions in some sense, yet the narrative was so flat—there is no emotional depth here. The main character refuses to address any trauma that she has faced, and while that kind of leads into the bizarre ending, I don't think it was worthwhile. It just made the story feel very shallow.

Besides that, I found the narrative structure to just be a bit lacking and jumpy—quickly going from flashback to present and back again. It was hard for me to form a coherent picture of her present day. I also thought this would be more about her mother's memory loss but instead it devolves into a picture of the main character's trauma—yet doesn't bother to really examine that much in context with her mother's memory loss.

The ending really turned the book on its head, though. I think on one hand, it added a real level of interest when contemplating the story as a whole. But even so, I still feel like it didn't add much to the story to make me like it more. While I understand what Doshi was trying to do with this book, I just feel like it fell flat for me. There was something missing—I think I just wanted more depth and acknowledgement of trauma and memory.