Goddess Complex

Reviews

“Very funny at times . . . prompts reflection about varying paths toward (or away from) motherhood, about different versions of the self, and about the choices we all make as we mature. Goddess Complex is a memorable trip.” —Norah Piehl, Book Reporter

“Inventive . . . Goddess Complex is astute about the repetitiveness of misery, and how pain can accrete like an enclosing wall, rising to block out the rest of the world . . . [The book] takes a sharp, unexpected turn as Sanjana flies to India, where she intends to finalize her divorce but ends up at a remote resort run by her doppelgänger, Sanjena, instead. It is here that Sanjana’s focus on her alternate lives turns literal, the novel swerving into a more frenzied chronicle involving elaborate deceptions, a cultish pregnancy influencer and a lot of blood . . . Haunting and hilarious, Goddess Complex is at once a satire, a Gothic tale, a novel of ideas, a character study. Like any individual life, the book bristles with possibilities.” —R.O. Kwon, The New York Times Book Review

“Sathian (Gold Diggers) wraps a whip-smart satire of Millennial womanhood around an arresting story of mistaken identity . . . a dazzling Operation Shylock–esque hall of mirrors . . . Sathian’s social commentary is riotous . . . and she finds intriguing new angles on the doppelgänger theme . . . This is incandescent.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With its piercing exploration of the unrelenting pressure on women to have children, Sathian's witty and wise novel will resonate with readers on either side of the debate and everyone in between.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Suspenseful to the very end . . . this well-crafted, mysterious novel with some dystopian twists is a worthwhile read. Fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will devour it.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Sathian unspools a wide-ranging, at times hallucinatory yarn that encompasses her protagonist’s frustrations with rigid rules about femininity, motherhood, Indian American social norms, and more . . . Not for nothing does the novel feature an epigraph from the Gothic classic Rebecca; the novel is rife with doppelgängers, gaslighting, hidden histories, and more, all to the purpose of questioning the behavioral expectations placed on women like Sanjana . . . It’s a noble goal, with fine set pieces that are both funny and melancholy.” —Kirkus

“Buckle up, readers: Goddess Complex, an heir to the best of Kafka or Roth in both its savage comic brilliance and its depth of meaning, is the wildest of rides. I can’t remember the last time I read a book that was simultaneously so serious in its ambition—this is a novel, ultimately, about female power and agency—and such a perfectly plotted page-turner. I could not put it down.” —Vauhini Vara, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Immortal King Rao and This is Salvaged

“Goddess Complex is hilarious, astute, and thoroughly enjoyable.” —Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists

“Goddess Complex is the most interesting, illuminating, and bold contemporary novel of ideas I’ve read in years. Sanjena Sathian has given us a world that’s split—between India and America, between acid and ache, between the longing to reproduce and the longing to remain inviolate, between comedy and horror—in a way that affords us that rarest of opportunities: a space to truly think.” —Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award finalist All This Could Be Different

“Sanjena Sathian has written a novel of great wit and daring, a phantasmagoric journey that dazzles at every turn. It’s surreal, it’s funny, it’s raw, and it glimmers, sentence upon sentence, with brilliance.” —Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Dog of the North

“Sanjena Sathian’s Goddess Complex is brilliant, audacious, and funny as hell. In a voice reminiscent of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Miranda July, Sathian writes about young adulthood with wit, heart, and aching precision. This isn’t a novel about a character stuck between two worlds, but a woman stuck between the world and herself. And that’s why I loved it.” —Neel Patel, author of Tell Me How to Be

“Goddess Complex has the rare quality of being both raucously funny and deeply affecting. Sanjena Sathian explores many topics in her second novel, from the surreal world of the pregnancy industrial complex to big questions of identity and self-creation. But it never loses sight of a simple, human concern: how to preserve our individuality in a world that seeks to degrade it. In one beautiful sentence after another, she shows us the absurd expectations of our modern moment, and the result is nothing less than spellbinding.” —Lee Cole, author of Groundskeeping

“Sanjena Sathian has written a whip-smart millennial mystery that charts a satirical course through the absurd cultural landscape of female identity. Funny, searching, and delectably rebellious.” —Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn

“Sanjena Sathian’s remarkable new novel is as clever as it is unsettling, at once horrifying and hilarious—Rosemary’s Baby, if Rosemary could freeze her eggs. An utterly contemporary psychological thriller about motherhood, identity, and doubles, Goddess Complex establishes Sathian as an indispensable writer of our generation.” —Andrew Ridker, author of Hope and The Altruists Expand reviews