The First House

A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.

As she sifts through the ruins of a shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into her own mind, where marital scenes intermingle with the old myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses. Over the course of a single summer, she is splitting like an insect in its chrysalis, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.

Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, this is a novel about unhappy families – about the bloody battlefield of the home and the enduring threat posed by those closest to us.

Like Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage or Ferrante's Days of Abandonment, The First House is at times brutal and harrowing, with sentences and scenes sharpened to a dagger point. But it is also lush, filled with symbols and signs and a kind of freedom that comes only through falling apart. I was consumed by this novel

Amina Cain, author of 'Indelicacy'

About Avni Doshi

Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey in 1982. Her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020, longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021, and won the Sushila Devi Award 2021. It was named a Book of the Year by the Guardian, Economist, Spectator, New York Times Book Review and NPR and has been translated into 26 languages. Avni Doshi's writing has appeared in British Vogue, Granta and the Sunday Times. Her second novel will be published in July 2026; it is called The First House.
Details
  • Imprint: Hamish Hamilton
  • ISBN: 9780241819081
  • Length: 240 pages
  • Price: £16.99
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