During a talk given in January by Tishani Doshi about her new novel, Small Days and Nights, I asked how she was able to write about deeply personal and potentially damaging emotions such as anger and grief. I had previously taken her introductory creative writing class and her response to my question perfectly aligned with what I had come to appreciate about her as a teacher and, once I read the novel, a writer: an ineluctable sense of balance and nuance.

She explained, “We are always living with incredible beauty and with incredible cruelty and these things always go together in some senses, and I suppose that as a writer I’m trying never to go only in one direction of despair. I always want to come back to beauty and hold that as an important touchstone.”

Given this attitude, I was surprised when a review in The Guardian called the novel “a howl of hatred and grief.” Make no mistake: the characters are bitter, vengeful and self-obsessed, but this book, especially compared to some of Doshi’s other works such as Girls Are Coming Out Of The Woods, is less howling and more murderously still and quiet. It appropriates imagery associated with innocence and hopes to expose the dark psychology and circumstances its characters find themselves in. Oceans, which normally remind us of the endless opportunities the world holds, become a “faraway sea wall [that will] hit me in the face when I’ve stopped expecting it.” Dogs are born only to die horribly. Even if nothing bad is happening at the moment, there is always a sense of foreboding.

The novel traps you inside the head of its protagonist, Grace, a half-Italian, half-Indian woman who discovers after her mother’s death that she has a secret sister with Down Syndrome. Grace takes her sister, Lucia, to live with her in a small beach house in rural Pondicherry and we are taken on a journey into her past and present: a childhood with volatile parents, her failing relationship with her husband and of course her life with Lucia.

The most enjoyable part of this novel is the prose, as there are plenty of one-liners filled to the brim with sensuality — “mornings at the beach can arrive like a whore in a jangly, too-tight dress at the end of a long and sleepless night” — and wit — “One day he’ll make a woman burst with joy. Not [his wife], of course, but someone else.” The reincorporation of certain images and events gives grounding to what could have become convoluted. Given the various chronological jumps and the location switching unpredictably between Pondicherry, New York and Venice, it’s impressive that Doshi manages to make every setting feel complete and alive. In this sense, the title itself acts as the novel’s thesis — seemingly insular moments in small parts of various cities are diffused into wider themes of class, cultural clashes, feminism, love and sex.

However, the real star of the book is Grace herself. She makes for an excellently crafted unreliable narrator, and her worldview dominates the narrative. The erratic chronology means that rather than being immersed in a cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end, we are exposed to Grace’s thoughts and reactions in various moments like pieces of a jigsaw falling into place. It is a phenomenal character study that reads like a literal portrait, since we can choose what elements to focus on without the narrative insisting on particular anecdotes or interpretations.

Some people may consider the fact that this book is Grace’s world is a disadvantage. The supporting characters are often one-dimensional figures who drift in and out of her life, Lucia is arguably treated more as a plot device than a character and it’s difficult to take the social commentary seriously when we are only seeing it from one perspective. I would not recommend this book to everyone, simply because an unreliable and self-obsessed narrator may not be appealing to some readers.

Having said that, I saw these elements less as setbacks and more as deliberate stylistic devices. The dialogue and interactions with other characters are stiff, almost Brechtian, to highlight Grace’s isolation since becoming Lucia’s full-time carer. The portrayal of Lucia may be harsh at times but that stops it from falling into saccharine uplifting platitudes, and when we do see deeper glimpses of Lucia’s personality and when Grace’s actions at earlier points come back to bite her, it is absolutely devastating. I am sure many NYU Abu Dhabi students can resonate with the confusion that Grace feels about where home is and the strange dynamics of gender and class privilege across the world.

Small Days And Nights is a fascinating read that will drop you so deeply into its world that you will be disoriented upon leaving it. It serves as a masterclass in crafting beautiful sentences. Its structure and pacing are intriguing and it tackles universal themes in a relatable and honest fashion. Even when Grace’s life becomes hopeless and the characters engage in incredible cruelty, beauty is always present and reminding us of its existence.