The First House by Avni Doshi review – an intense portrait of marriage and freedom

In the follow-up to the Booker-shortlisted Burnt Sugar, a woman seeks liberation from her controlling relationships

Avni Doshi’s second novel is narrated by an unnamed woman in the suburban US who is shocked to hear her husband announce that he is leaving her. She isn’t in love with him, exactly, but she sees their marriage as a structure or “container” for her existence. Formerly a novelist, her writing has stalled since having children. Her husband controls their finances, and won’t tell her why the credit card keeps failing. She suspects he’s been sleeping around.

In the aftermath of his departure she tries to isolate herself, not only from her ex, but also from her own family, whose well-meaning interference becomes another kind of domination. She’s a practising astrologist – the “first house” of the title refers both to the couple’s home and to the astrological division of the heavens that has a bearing on the body, physical appearance and early life experience: foundations for a self. This self is exposed by abandonment. The First House, as a whole, is the story of its excoriation: a harsh, occasionally bitterly funny rejection of the narrator’s personhood and relationships as they stand. Marriage, she states, requires “a terrible fear of consequences”; “if either person in a couple stopped being afraid, it would certainly break apart”. Her parents bully her. Her cousin tries to set her up with other men. Her daughter just wants a phone. Relationships, like devices, promise connection and deliver alienation. “The tight, airless room of a marriage only created the conditions for us to realise we were alone, always alone.”
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