08 April 2025
Lina never wanted children, but now there are two lines on the test. Where does she go from here?
Lina Solanki is pregnant and newly orphaned, living with her in-laws in their opulent Dubai villa. While her husband fails to make concrete plans to find their own place and tensions in their marriage grow, Lina’s boisterous mother-in-law interferes with every aspect of the pregnancy. Then, when proof of a horrifying family secret arrives from Mumbai, Lina realises that she has a choice when it comes to her baby, her marriage and her place in the world – but is it a choice she wants to make?
A bittersweet yet life-affirming debut revealing the intricacies of family life behind closed doors, Shape of an Apostrophe is a taboo-breaking exploration of motherhood, obedience, rebellion and the surprising persistence of love.
‘Very powerful – a wonderfully thought-provoking, very moving novel that gets to the heart of what it is to be a woman in a world run by men’ Marian Keyes
‘A darkly funny tale about the Indian diaspora’ Avni Doshi
Read an extract from Uttama Kirit Patel’s powerful debut below.
Available from: Waterstones | Bookshop.org | Amazon
A Note
There are two ways to read a story, just as there are two ways to swim.
At the surface, easy, clear, air accessible, known terrains. Or beneath, within, darker but deeper, breath held, unseen spaces wound tight in the chest. As this is a story about volition, the choice is yours. What transpires remains the same. What you take with you may be drastically altered.
Much awaits.
…
‘Wait 3 minutes to confirm a “Not Pregnant” result,’ the leaflet read.
The day’s last prayer call ended in her first minute there, sung from the neighbourhood mosque between sunset and midnight. In the second, Lina started on Papa’s study. Mourning had come with an instruction manual. Daughters must not light the funeral pyre. Colour, absolutely not; only white garments in grief. Cremation fumes should be washed out of the hair. Twice, with shampoo.
Typical, Lina complained to her father, to have such decorum in death and ignore its aftermath. For that, she’d been left alone to clear out the anarchy of Papa’s belongings. Would it kill you to get a bit organised?
‘Sorry,’ she said to the urn in front of where she sat on the floor.
On her right, a Yes pile held Papa’s treasures: a miniature barquentine carved in real gold, his Visconti fountain pen, a bottle of midnight-blue ink. In the No pile lay yesterday’s First Response box, Barbie pink in colour, a woman’s silhouette lurking inside an oversized numeric digit. Was she pregnant or just standing there naked? The branding shouted in caps lock: ‘CAN TELL YOU 6 DAYS SOONER. No brand is MORE accurate.’
For today’s test, Lina had chosen Clearblue, a landscape and logo colour she trusted.
In the third minute, she placed the stick between the Yes and No piles, and waited for blue lines to appear in the tiny windows labelled ‘Control’ and ‘Result’, the irony of which had evaded a whole corporation. When the lines came into view, they were two this time, at a crossroads – a presumption of pregnancy as a plus.
Lina tried jamming the test into the First Response box with the other ‘Not Pregnant’, wishing it were so. How careless of that mother, Nature herself, to allow such an invasion without warning. No baby should begin as a battle.
