Writers on Reading. Part Twelve, Avni Doshi

Collage by Bhargavi Rudraraju, with imagery from Marta Lamovsek and the cover of ‘Girl in White Cotton’ designed by Samanta Batra Mehta.

Avni Doshi's debut novel Girl in White Cotton is a reflection on the complex relationships of mothers and daughters engulfed in patriarchy but carefully navigating the nuances through the lens of changing memory. From the very first line, the novel draws you into a world where there the narrator’s deepest, darkest thoughts find a voice, a home, and even empathy. It beautifully juxtaposes  (and even subtly flips) the ideas of certitude and ambiguity in navigating relationships and life itself, with Antara - the protagonist who seems to be stuck in time and her mother who is slowly losing her memory. 

We spoke to Avni about the journey of this book from the way the first line was conceived to how it feels to have a new edition in the UK, her preoccupation with memory and time, the advice she would give to new writers. 

You’re a novelist, essayist, art writer, curator, and a new mom. Are there any processes or subjects or perspectives that crossed over from one part of your life to the other, which seemed most surprising and unexpected even to you?

Yes, I think every aspect of my life impacts all the others. I probably mother like a writer, whatever that means. When I worked as a curator, I put together a show about memory as Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores it in ‘A Hundred Years of Solitude’, which I then included in a different form in the novel. Similarly, a short essay I wrote about food and memory for Harper’s Bazaar worked as a kind of spark for this draft of the novel – it offered me an entry point into my character. 

What books/text/art were you in the company of while writing this book?

I had books by Deborah Levy, Jenny Offill, Javiar Marias, Don Delillo and others sitting on a bookshelf nearby. I didn’t reread anything from beginning to end, but I sometimes would read a few sentences to sustain me.

You said in an interview, “I think about memory as something dynamic that is constantly being reauthored by the people who remember it.” How would you juxtapose the notions of memory, forgetting, and fiction?

I think when it comes to memory and amnesia and writing fiction, perspective is everything – what we choose to remember or forget and how we narrativize that to create a story. We do this in fiction but we do this in our lives as well. So much of what we want to remember or forget depends on desire, how we want to see ourselves and how we would like to frame others. People and stories are inextricably linked.

Your novel begins “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” From where did this line emerge and what made you decide this would be the first line?

I worked on this line quite a lot – played with the length of it, the cadence, the words. I wanted to set the tone for the rest of the paragraph, page, chapter and book with the first line. In a sense, I wanted it to tell the whole story. I thought about who my narrator was and how she would want to introduce herself, what she might reveal, what she might give away without wanting to. Immediately in the first line, there is a sense of cruelty, a sense of sadness, nostalgia – a sense of time in the verbs, pleasure and pain, and of course, the question of what is a lie and what is the truth – which is one of the animating questions of the novel.

In this story, there are about three and close to four generations of women; men are sparse but patriarchy engulfs it. The messaging is very subtle through character settings. Was it a deliberate choice to avoid any direct exploration of patriarchy? What did the women in your life have to say about this novel?

I recently wrote an essay about the writing process of this novel in Elle India, where I describe patriarchy existing pervasively, in the structure of things. If the novel is a house of sorts, then patriarchy makes up the floor, walls, the ceiling. It’s easy to go about our lives and forget these architectural realities – that is, until a slat comes up in the floor, or the ceiling caves in. This is what is particularly lulling and dangerous about patriarchy, particularly in the novel – it is where the characters reside and yet sometimes they are unaware of it.

 I have had a lot of different reactions from the women in my life. The responses have mostly been very positive, but I sense a nervous undertone sometimes. One friend said she had no idea I was so dark. Everyone wonders about my married life and my relationship with my mother. I think it becomes difficult for others to differentiate the character from me, her inner life from my inner life – and so instead of seeing this as something I have constructed, it becomes a mirror of me.

 The truth is something more complicated. On one hand, this is fiction, a book I have written, a world I have made. On the other hand, to write every sentence of the book, I have had to exist, imagine, place myself in the story, in the characters, to know the emotional and psychological reality of the moment. How can I then say I have not experienced what the character has experienced?

A lot of writing confronts your life and realities. How does one cope with the way people respond or perceive it as a personal story? Should you draw a line between personal and fictional?

It can indeed be frustrating to keep answering questions of autobiography – and why does it actually matter? Is the artistry of writing suddenly lessened? The compartmentalization of self and work, particularly when writing or making art, is murky at best. But that is probably what makes the feeling of creating work so remarkable.

What do you read to your child? After becoming a mom, did your own reading choices change as well?

Before and during my pregnancy I became obsessed with reading about what writers had written about motherhood. Sheila Heti, Rachel Cusk, and Deborah Levy all opened my eyes to richness and variety of what that kind of writing could look like.

I read all the regular childhood favorites to my son – Goodnight Moon and the rest. He’s a bit like me in that he loves books and likes to return to the same book again and again until he can almost memorize passages.

How were you able to bring the “caregiver’s” perspective? What kind of research, if any, went into that?

I actually came upon this by chance, when I was reading about some generic information on an Alzheimer’s website soon after my grandmother was diagnosed. There was a link that offered support for caregivers. This struck me at first, I had never thought of this and then, of course, it made complete sense. After that it was less about research and more about imagining my character in the role of caregiver – how would she respond to it and what were the particularities of her relationship with her mother that would make the experience trying? Also, what other factors would be at play? Societal expectations, and her life with her husband?

“I’ve never felt pride and shame mingle so closely. It’s a peculiar sensation — one of nausea and suspension. My husband told me he felt the same way when he thought of all his years playing golf — always striving, but always beginning again.” says Avni about the art work created out of her rejected manuscripts moulded with paper and golf balls as a measure of time.

As a reader, it is both refreshing and comforting, to read something by a woman with predominant characters who’re women. What are some of your favourite books by women about women?

Sheila Heti’s book Motherhood (which I talk about all the time) is probably one of my favorites.

Girl In White Cotton releases as Burnt Sugar in the UK next year under Hamish Hamilton. Firstly congratulations! What inspired the new name and cover? How are you feeling about the release?

I am so excited to see the book come out in different countries and also to see how readers engage with the book. The title change which was a collaborative decision came after hearing my UK editor Hermione Thompson’s concerns about whether the original title would translate in the same way for a UK audience.

 Covers are mostly always different from region to region, and in this case, I can’t take any credit because I’ve had the good fortune of having brilliant designers do the covers for both editions. The book is obviously layered and complex and I think both point to different aspects of the story. For the UK cover, the idea of the domestic monster, something uncanny and yet banal, was where the image stemmed from. The cover for the UK edition is by Holly Ovenden.

And to conclude, what advice would you give writers working on their debut novels?

I showed my work too soon, talked about it too soon, and I think that was a mistake. Writers are usually sensitive, thin-skinned and while rejection is sometimes useless, it is also paralyzing. Spend time on your writing, nurture your story, your voice, your style – let it develop with no one watching, with no one tearing it down.

 But maybe this advice is hard to give and hard to take – I realized this myself only after a lot of time and maturity.

Interviewed by Ankita Shah