by Avni Doshi
First published 2020
Antara grew up dragged behind her mother Tara through a series of reckless adventures. Tara left her marriage to follow Baba, the spiritual leader of an ashram, leaving young Antara in the care of Kali Mata, an American devotee. Later Tara took up begging to anger her wealthy parents and pursued a vagrant artist through the streets, always with her daughter trailing behind. Now Tara's memory is failing and Antara, grown into an artist with a marriage of her own, faces the burden of caring for the woman who never truly cared for her. As Tara's condition worsens, Antara questions whether her mother's forgetfulness is genuine or performed. She also wonders if her own recollections of childhood neglect and trauma are accurate or distorted by years of resentment. The tangled relationship between mother and daughter unravels through competing versions of the past, each woman's truth shaped by pain and self-protection.
Genres: literary-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Ashram
Period: 21st-century
240 pages · Paperback · Hamish Hamilton
Content warnings: abuse, mental-illness