The man reminisces about his bond with a young feminist named Chitra, whom he unceremoniously cast aside, but his mind mostly wanders towards his dysfunctional family, consisting of his parents, uncle, and a divorced, elder sister.

[5][6] Writing for The New York Times, Parul Sehgal considered Ghachar Ghochar to be "a great Indian novel" and wrote, "Folded into the compressed, densely psychological portrait of [the narrator's] family is a whole universe: a parable of rising India, an indictment of domestic violence, a taxonomy of ants and a sly commentary on translation itself.

[9] Lucy Scholes of The Independent too took note of the comparisons to Chekhov and wrote that "brevity serves Shanbhag’s storytelling to great effect, not least because much of what makes the narrative so gripping lies in what he leaves unsaid.

"[10] Reviewing the book for The Globe and Mail, Jade Colbert found the unnamed narrator to be "a superfluous man of the type Chekhov might recognize" and commended Shanbhag for subtlety conveying the troubled "gender dynamic" in India.

[11] Preti Taneja of the New Statesman took note of the book's feminist themes and wrote, "Perur’s translation captures the heartbreaking achievement of Shanbhag’s writing: to present, in a line or two, a body and mind coming of age in a society that casts violence as tenderness, ownership as love.