Avni Doshi’s fifth novel fails to find its characters

Avni Doshi's new novel The First House, a story about the death and decay of a marriage set in a suburban US home, has received a sharply critical review. The reviewer notes that while Doshi avoids easy political polemic about immigrants, her characters refuse to take shape and remain emotionally irrelevant.

The narrator-protagonist is described as self-indulgent yet colourless, the husband as a cardboard cut-out with no discernible motivation, and the daughters as passive and infantile. The reviewer says Doshi tried to create a spectrum of unattractive characters but they fail to touch or move the reader. The language is described as lacklustre, and reading the novel is compared to wallowing in claustrophobia.

Published by Fourth Estate India, the novel runs 224 pages and costs Rs.599. The review concludes that despite the seductive idea of obnoxious characters, they seem like half-hearted puppetry that the reader wishes would get over sooner.