Sanjena Sathian’s second novel “Goddess Complex” playfully yet with so much conviction, dissects the millennial woman’s relationship with motherhood, identity, and choice. Following her acclaimed debut “Gold Diggers,” Sathian offers a psychological thriller that doubles as a razor-sharp feminist satire, creating a narrative that feels urgently contemporary and simultaneously ancient in its concerns.

At thirty-two, Sanjana Satyananda is a PhD candidate in Anthropology on medical leave, separated from her unsuccessful actor husband Killian after rejecting his sudden desire for children at a remote commune in India. While her sister and best friend seemingly navigate the expectations and nuances of modern womanhood with ease, Sanjana is left to pick up the pieces of her traumatized, troubled self.

The novel’s conflict starts when Sanjana begins receiving congratulatory messages about a pregnancy that doesn’t exist. Her quest to track down her missing husband leads her to a fertility retreat in Pune, India, where she encounters her uncanny doppelgänger, Sanjena Sathian, a “pregnancy influencer” who has seemingly appropriated both her identity and her husband. What follows is a mind-bending exploration of selfhood and female experience of fertility.

The novel begins with remarkable promise. Sathian’s prose is sharp, confident and immersive. It pushes the boundaries of literary fiction into a compelling and psychologically alert narrative, particularly in the early chapters where Sanjana’s irresoluteness towards motherhood is accomplished with both vulnerability and asperity. The unravelling of her life marked by her fractured marriage with Killian, her unease with normative adulthood and the ominous ambiance of the story is established well. There is a dark allure in the progression of the plot and Sathian successfully manages to incorporate pivotal social commentaries around the commodification of reproduction and wellness culture.

Sathian’s greatest achievement lies in her portrayal of consciousness under siege. As Sanjana recovers from a concussion at the retreat, the boundaries between reality and delusion dissolve. The author captures the disconcerting sensation of watching oneself be remade from within.The prose achieves a hypnotic quality that immerses readers in Sanjana’s dissociative state.

Despite its psychological intensity, “Goddess Complex” maintains a biting satirical edge. Sathian satirises contemporary wellness culture and fertility entrepreneurship. The commodification of even our most intimate biological processes becomes a target for the author’s incisive wit.

The novel’s exploration of South Asian American identity, while less explicit than in “Gold Diggers,” adds crucial depth to its examination of reproductive expectations. The particular pressures placed on South Asian women regarding marriage and motherhood create an additional layer of cultural critique that feels authentic and necessary.

The novel addresses the peculiar terror of confronting alternate versions of oneself—the lives not lived, the choices not made, the selves we might have become.

The novel’s treatment of abortion, fertility anxiety, and the commodification of reproductive technology feels both timely and necessary. Rather than offering easy answers, Sathian presents the complexity of these issues with intelligence and empathy, creating space for readers to examine their own assumptions and choices.

The book excels in its foreboding atmosphere and its willingness to experiment with form throughout the plot. The retreat in Pune, introduced with a gothic and macabre atmosphere, becomes the center for strange rituals and the arrival of new characters. It also provides the scope to pose the important questions of the book: What does autonomy look like when biology, culture, and capitalism collide? How do women navigate their desires when societal scripts are so prescriptive?

However, as the plot progresses, the nuance gives way for archetypes. The new characters feel like caricatures with personalities that seem to be governed by their functions and not their complexities. Towards the second half of the novel, the story feels quite claustrophobic and anxiously completed. This may be a deliberate stylistic choice that mirrors Sanjana’s psychological fragmentation, but the effect distances the reader.

One of the novel’s most striking features is its examination of womanhood through multiple lenses. Sathian ensures that the story passes the Bechdel test with ease, and the contrasting views on motherhood across the women in the novel are refreshing in their diversity. However, Sanjana’s own stance on motherhood and its origins, its intensity, and its volatility is never presented. She resists it, even mocks it, but the book doesn’t provide enough of the emotional scaffolding that might explain why. Her relationship with her mother also feels like a missed opportunity for exploration as it was one of the most impactful chapters of the entire book. The novel hints at intergenerational distance and cultural expectation, but never lingers long enough to excavate them with the care they deserve.

The plot too sidelines its own thriller establishment. The core premise of Killian’s disappearance, initially presented as a mystery to be solved, fizzles out gradually, engulfed by the retreat’s subplot. The ending, though seems fitting, feels rather abrupt. It leaves the crucial notions unresolved, particularly those around fatherhood and male agency, which aren’t developed enough for a novel that is based on the ideas of reproductive autonomy.

Despite these limitations, Goddess Complex remains ambitious and thematically bold. Its attempt to render the fragmentation of the self under the weight of societal expectations is commendable. Sathian’s voice is resolute, and the book works vividly in its presentation. But in striving to say so much, it sometimes leaves its most urgent questions only half-asked.

Upon my arrival at Lia and Gor’s, I’d apologized for being a bitch about Tadpole, and Lia had adopted that sympathetic affect again, lowering her voice. “This must be hard for you,” she said. For a moment I wondered if she’d guessed about the abortion, and relief cooled me, but then she said, “You still have time.” “For?”

We were making up the double bed in the future nursery. Lia tossed me a pillow and a pillowcase. “All this stuff.” She jerked her head as if to say, A house, a home. I remembered, suddenly, helping her move into her first New York home: a closet-size bedroom in a Greenpoint apartment shared with two Craigslisters. We had scrubbed the place for hours to rid it of an ominous chemical scent, and when it still reeked ages later, Lia had collapsed on the floor, half laughing, half crying, and rubbed her snotty face on my shirt and admitted that she was terrified—what if she did not figure out how to be a real person, out here?—and I had touched her hair and promised that I, too, felt like a cipher to myself.

“Kids, if you want them,” she said now. “A partner, if you want one. You’re just in a shitty life season.”

I nodded, shoving the pillow into the silk fabric and zipping it shut.

“Any word? From Killian?”

“No. I’ve been trying to track him down. Well, sort of.”

She frowned, her attorney brain switching on. “Let us know when you need a lawyer.”

“I don’t have any money, Lia,” I said, which was true. My income from editing college application essays was dwindling, and when my grad school stipend restarted in August, it would barely cover daily expenses.

Lia flushed. She had become one of those rich people who found it gauche to discuss finances.

“He can’t ghost you forever,” she said. “Are you seeing anyone new?”

“Not really.” Max was gone for good. He’d texted once to make sure I’d gotten to Brooklyn, and then when I replied saying I didn’t want to see him anymore, he sent a too-quick response, agreeing with my decision.

“Do you want any of this?” Lia asked, kneeling to tuck in the fitted sheet. I dropped to meet her and pulled my side. It stretched like one of those life nets used to catch suicidal jumpers. “Do you want to be married again? Have a family?”

I almost replied with my old line: I don’t know, or Not yet.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But not wanting it is its own kind of … hard.”

“I guess I can see that,” she said, pulling a strained expression that suggested she could not. “You know, Gor and I are, sociologically speaking, the exception. Our generation is having fewer babies than ever. It was in the Times this week. People can’t afford to buy homes, so there’s nowhere to put their families. Statistically, you’re the majority.”

“Lia, you bought a house.”

“We bought a condo,” she said, with a dignified sniff.

She beckoned me to follow her to the kitchen. Sandra Day O’Connor appeared out of nowhere and bit me on the toe. “Oh, she’s just love-nipping,” Lia said. “Anyway, you’re a grad student. Don’t you know a whole bunch of child-free types? Gays and stuff?”

We’d had this conversation before. Find your people, Lia loved to say, which always stung, as I’d sort of thought she was my people. In college, she’d once asked if I was sure I wasn’t a little bit gay, because the LGBT groups might take me, and if not them, then maybe the South Asian Student Association?

Now Lia continued, “Or is this, like, an Indian identity thing?” Her voice lowered to a respectful hush on the word Indian.

“I think it’s an identity thing,” I said, thinking of Dharma and her desire to believe that my shit was all attributable to immigrants. That what I was feeling had nothing to do with her.

Lia’s head was buried in the fridge. There were at least ten more sonograms of Tadpole on the stainless steel. “I’m fucking starving. It’s like my body’s trying to make up for the first couple of months. I couldn’t eat anything salty. I never knew salt had been, like, the great joy of my life. It’s all so weird.”

Sandra Day O’Connor leapt onto the countertop. Lia chided her.

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been meaning to tell you … I’ve been getting some weird shit from strangers these days.” I had waffled on how much to tell Lia about the texts, initially figuring I’d say nothing because explaining the roots of the mix-up would require me to tell her about my abortion, and I assumed it was in bad taste to discuss abortion with a pregnant woman.

But matters had grown more bizarre by the day. Everyone who’d contacted me—the unknown texters, Shazia, Miranda—had since vanished into the ether. There was a record of the messages and calls, which was the only thing that led me to believe I was not insane. At night I opened the photo taken in Bombay and stared at it furiously, as though the woman in the picture would suddenly move, turn over her shoulder, wink at me, finally, revealing some secret.

Then, the night I arrived at Lia’s, I checked my phone to find that I’d been added to a WhatsApp group without my consent called Bandra Expat Moms. I scrolled the list of members—hundreds. It was not the first time I’d been dropped into a WhatsApp group that then flooded my notifications all day; that was daily life in Bombay. I wrote to the whole group: how did you people get my number?? and someone said I was free to leave whenever I wanted, but please see the group’s guidelines for conduct: rudeness was not tolerated. Then someone else replied suggesting they institute a zero tolerance policy for meanness because otherwise what example were they setting for their children? and someone else said to be kind above all! because the whole point was that they were all going through something together and hadn’t they been snapping at partners and electricians and maids on occasion, due to stress? and someone else said to please call maids domestic workers and asked by the way what the charge was for a night nurse in Bombay because her friends in London swore by them but she found the idea a little old-fashioned but also it was India and wasn’t it good to provide employment opportunities? I’d planned to lurk on in the group, to see what happened next, but after twenty-four hours I was kicked out. The last message I could see was an opinion poll on the zero tolerance policy. The future moms had elected in favor, voting me off the island.

It was all so strange that I had actually booked an appointment at a free clinic during my first week at Lia’s to have the position of my new IUD checked. When they’d told me it was fine, I had whispered to the physician’s assistant: You’re sure I’m not pregnant? It was as though the past were overlaying the present. All these texts seemed to be emerging from some other realm, a parallel universe in which I had not left Killian on that beach in Goa, in which I had not had the thing sucked out of me, and when I was very high I had the thought that perhaps the other timeline had grown hungry, hungry like an evolving fetus, and decided it was time to devour the life I’d tried to make on my own terms. I did not say any of this to the PA, but she must have spotted the glimmer of crazy in my pupils, because her tone changed, and she spoke to me as though I were extremely stupid and perhaps unstable. I was not pregnant, she explained. Hardly anyone got pregnant with an IUD. I begged for proof. I could feel it in me, I said. I hadn’t noticed fast enough last time, but I knew now. Don’t they say a mother knows? The PA showed me, clearly, the arms of the implant, extended into a superhero T, then asked if I needed a referral for a therapist.

I was still deciding whether, and how, to share some of this with Lia when I heard the sound of Gor’s keys in the lock.

“Babe,” he called. “Did you order dinner?”

Excerpted with permission from Goddess Complex by Sanjena Sathian published by Harper Collins India 2025