Marigold, a novel by Heena Singhal, is Booker Prize–worthy psychological literary fiction in its truest sense, controlled in voice, patient in pacing, and deeply attentive to the fragile interior life of its protagonist. The writing resists spectacle, choosing instead a quiet intensity that allows emotional truth to unfold with restraint and precision.
Singhal, an artist, painter, and mother of two daughters, brings a distinctly visual and emotional sensibility to her prose. Marigold, her second book, meditates on motherhood, not as sentiment, but as transformation. It examines how becoming a mother reshapes identity while leaving behind faint, haunting impressions of the self that once existed.
Set in Rome, the novel follows Mari, a woman working in a vintage library, navigating unresolved grief and psychological distress. Her reality is shaped as much by memory and hallucination as by lived experience. Therapy sessions, fragments of family history, and repetitive daily rituals slowly expose the porous boundary between what is remembered, imagined, and endured. Mari’s most intimate relationships unfold largely within her inner world, lending the narrative a sense of isolation that is both unsettling and deeply human.
Singhal’s prose is understated yet piercing, capturing emotional dissonance without melodrama. Themes of loss, mental health, desire, and maternal ambivalence are explored with nuance and empathy. The city of Rome itself becomes a quiet witness, layered, ancient, and echoing with unspoken histories.
Readers moved by The Bell Jar or The Sense of an Ending will find Marigold profoundly resonant. It stands among the most accomplished psychological literary fiction novels of the year, a book that lingers long after the final page. Marigold breaks your heart softly, leaving behind an ache that feels intimate, inevitable, and true.
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