Slow and searing, Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar is a hypnotic breakdown of a mother daughter relationship. What happens when the layers of diplomacy are peeled back and we are left with just raw humanity? It smells and sounds a lot like the title of this piece, burnt sugar.

Parts of this book were especially difficult to read since they involved cruel child abuse, domestic violence and nonconsensual encounters. Despite being a relatively short book, it took me weeks to wade into Doshi's world. I finished and I am still not sure what to make of it all. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Abrams Overlook for my copy of Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi in exchange for an honest review. It published January 26, 2021.
I can totally see why this book won a Booker Prize. Raw, gritty, unique. A different life than I’ve come across in most of what I’ve read. However, some of the sexual stuff was difficult for me to read, and I personally would’ve avoided, had I known, due to my own sensitivities.

This one was hard to get through even when I could appreciate it in an intellectual way, emotionally it was more than I could manage.

Burnt Sugar is one seriously buzzed-about book, and for good reason. Avni Doshi is a beautiful, lyrical writer who manages to evoke striking imagery and bring the complexities and nuances of her characters to life so vividly that they made it into my dreams. That’s not to say this is an easy read; it wasn’t for me by any means. Not only is it heavy emotionally, with incessant details of a heartbreaking, often enraging mother-daughter relationship and the long-term effects of abuse, but it’s also not a concise read. There are lots of details and narrative. I thought every word made a difference in the novel, but I had to push myself to stick with it through a few parts.

Trigger warnings abound, so take care of yourself while you’re reading Burnt Sugar. But if you can dive in, I’d recommend it wholeheartedly. What a gorgeous story. I can’t wait to read more of Doshi’s work! Thanks so much to the publisher for this e-arc.

This book lived up to it's hype. Beautifully written and I'm sorry it took me so long to get to it.

I think it was the WaPo that said "hard to take, harder to shake" or something like that and... yep. This is a brutal read at times, an absolutely harrowing one... but it lingers. Doshi's writing is exquisite even in the face of awful things and while I don't know that I can say I enjoyed this, I'm glad I read it.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

So painfully precise. Beautiful and haunting. “The sympathy she elicits in others gives rise to something acrid in me.”

Made it half way and this is a dnf for now - I found the contemporary chapters electric and had such a beautiful flow to the writing, but was losing that in some of the flashbacks. Popped aside for now as I’d like to return to this again one day

This book was not what I expected -- so many twists and turns that were excellently executed, giving the readers adequate clues while still making sure that payoff was shocking. The tension in this novel was palpable and I found many of the characters unlikable, but still I couldn't look away.

I loved this book. Parts of it felt like they reflected my own relationship with my mother, so it was almost uncomfortable to read (but in a good way!!) This book made me feel very introspective and I had to read it slowly in small bits because it really spoke to me. Plus, the cover is absolutely gorgeous!

The premise drew me in to reading this, but I struggled from the beginning. Unfortunately, did not finish.

This book took me by surprise. It is definitely a challenging read and not at all for everybody, I am still unsure if it is for me or not. The main character details her life in beautiful but excruciating detail and there were many points where I wanted to quit reading. The book is very harrowing and describes a mother-daughter relationship that is tense and deeply unsettling most of the time. For the most part, I think I can deal with unlikeable characters, but this novel really took it to a new level. Usually, what motivates me to continue a book is seeing where the characters will end up and how they feel about that. In this book, I wasn't so much invested/interested in where our protagonist ended her story as much as the deep character study that the author unveils. When I say she is acidic, I don't mean that Tara is a bit hard to like or terse, she can be fully menacing. I truly don't know what compelled me to complete the book, because at times, I was really desperate to get away. The book is truly "literary fiction" in every sense of the word- adhering to the clichés of the genre as well as the triumphs. The author is extremely talented, even if this story may not have been exactly my kind of work. She writes incredible prose and is able to take the audience through a journey with her wit and style. I will definitely recommend this to certain people. Be warned, this book is like the artic- absolutely no warmth in sight but what a pretty view.

I am generally really drawn to books that deal with different cultures and norms in different parts of the globe. I did learn a small amount about the class system in modern day India, however the story itself fell extremely flat and forced at the same time which is a very odd combination. I was drawn to find out what had happened between the mother and daughter that had caused their division and ended up having to read small sections starting around the 50% mark of the book to read it. I very rarely DNF, but came within seconds with this book. I think that the intent of the book was to provide a risque, voyeuristic experience. I ended up just feeling disgusted by the whole experience. I believe that this is my very first one star rating. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley..

Thank you to NetGalley and Abrams for the #ReadersCopy !.

Now available.

Slow and searing, Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar is a hypnotic breakdown of a mother daughter relationship. What happens when the layers of diplomacy are peeled back and we are left with just raw humanity? It smells and sounds a lot like the title of this piece, burnt sugar.

Parts of this book were especially difficult to read since they involved cruel child abuse, domestic violence and nonconsensual encounters. Despite being a relatively short book, it took me weeks to wade into Doshi's world. I finished and I am still not sure what to make of it all.

Well-written but I could just not care about any of the characters. Had to force myself to slog through this book. Puzzled as to all the praise it has received.

This book is just gross. I thought the premise was interesting - a mother who doesn't take care of her daughter eventually needing care from her daughter, but it's just gross.

Burnt Sugar is an incredible novel with messages and characters that remain with its reader far beyond the final line. In this sometimes humorous, sometimes dark, always ephemeral piece of literature, Avni Doshi unspools an original take on the theme of inheritance—what we take on willingly and unwillingly.

The first chapter introduces us to Antara, narrator and protagonist, a woman obligated to care for her mother. Antara explains, “The reason is simple: my mother is forgetting, and there is nothing I can do about it. There is no way to make her remember things she has done in the past, no way to baste her in guilt. I used to bring up instances of her cruelty, casually, over tea, and watch her face curve into a frown. Now, she mostly can’t recall what I’m talking about; her eyes are distant with perpetual cheer.”

On the surface Antara does the right things: moves her mother in with her, takes her to the doctor, experiments with her diet. But resentment simmers as she admits, “It seems to me now that this forgetting is convenient, that she doesn’t want to remember the things she has said and done. It feels unfair that she can put away the past from her mind while I’m brimming with it all the time.” The story soon becomes as much about Antara’s remembering as her mother’s forgetting, a revelatory examination of memory both individual and shared.

The novel’s structure mirrors this tug of war, pulling back to Antara’s childhood and even to her mother’s, then propelling forward to reveal new truths (or perceived truths) about the characters. As a girl, Antara suffers her father’s abandonment, and her mother’s exploits render them homeless for a period. Her grandparents are saviors, although their rescue is always tainted with grim-faced displeasure and disapproval of Antara’s mother.

These intergenerational ties are woven masterfully, highlighting parallels in behavior and appearance, as well as the genesis of wounds and trauma. With biting language and dark humor, Antara slowly reveals the troublesome behavior she undertook while emerging into adulthood, further developing her complex and multi-dimensional character. All the while in the present, Antara is so fixated on the wrongs inflicted on her in childhood that she evolves into a madness that echoes her mother’s neurological ills.

Antara attempts to hold it together with the very societal trappings her mother eschewed. She finds a perverse safety in marrying Dilip, a repatriated Indian who “grew up in Milwaukee, where his ears knew only soft Q-tips and suburban stillness.” Antara’s family is a product of Pune, an Indian city described by Dilip as sensory overload, loud and too pungent. Antara goes to great lengths to create a calm home her husband will find satisfactory, yearning for a “marriage free of gray, fuzzy edges,” and even calculates a pregnancy in order to stay safe from the chaos of her memory.

In this way, Burnt Sugar explores security and permanence, the lengths to which people go in search of what they were denied as children. It is a commentary on how women play by the rules in order to establish a place from which they can’t be evicted—and the danger that lurks when they choose not to.

Dilip’s perception of his wife’s situation gains importance for the reader as Antara’s perspective becomes increasingly unreliable. “It’s hard,” he notes presciently, “for me to understand your relationship with [your mother] sometimes. Being around her is very stressful for you. And the other way round. To be honest, I wonder if you’ll make her worse or better.” Antara does eventually succeed in returning her mother to the present moment: lucid, even sharp, herself again. But in that particular moment of clarity, when the two women are finally able to confront each other on an even battlefield, Antara realizes the power she has over her mother’s well-being.

The novel ends with an incredible crescendo as the major characters gather in Antara and Dilip’s apartment. Antara struggles to juggle a newborn baby, a self-destructive mother, a judgmental grandmother, a manipulative mother-in-law, and the reappearance of her long-lost father upon whom the family heaps their attention. Meanwhile her husband delights in the occasion, oblivious to her concerns. The small talk and frivolity covering all that is wrong under the surface is more than Antara can bear.

Antara is a flawed heroine, admitting even in the opening line, “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.” But she is a heroine many women will identify with. She bears her mother’s imprint and indeed the mark of many generations of women. Under such pressure, who wouldn’t dance on the precipice of madness?

Wow. Raw and complex novel about a woman’s complex relationship with her mother. Set in India, readers are immersed in the culture and vocabulary of the country as well as the family customs. Focused on the maternal relationships, the book is rich and complicated. I felt myself holding my breath reading some paragraphs and loved how the novel built up to the end. Read this book.

Heartfelt thanks to NetGalley, Overlook Press, and the masterful author, Avni Doshi for a copy of this book for review.

What really jumped out at me when reading about this book was the relationship between a mother and a daughter. I always love reading about them because they're complex and messy at times. However, this book just fell flat for me. Maybe it's a moment of "it's me, not the book" but I just struggled with this read. This book is about painful emotions and hard relationships. This sentence stuck out to me a lot “I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure.” This goes on to talk about the bonds of family and so much more. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it.

I admired but didn’t particularly like this book. I’ve talked before about how I don’t really get on with books about motherhood, and sometimes the reverse is true too, I don’t always love books about daughterhood, especially when it’s the book’s main focus. (Something like Transcendent Kingdom is the exception, where the mother/daughter relationship is one thread among many.)

I was finding something salvageable in the first half of Burnt Sugar, but the second half just lost me. While I tend to enjoy 'unlikable' protagonists, Antara was often too much for me--I found her to be deliberately belligerent toward the reader in a way that I didn't think was particularly interesting or well-executed. I think this book does have a lot going for it in terms of its chilly depiction of a strained mother/daughter relationship, but Antara herself staunchly refused to do any of the heavy lifting to earn my investment. I just didn't find her believable or her actions comprehensible; this book is written in the first person and still I struggled to discern some of Antara's motivations (this isn't helped by the book's awkward structure, flitting between the past and the present in a way that was occasionally challenging to follow and which I didn't think ultimately did it any favors).

Avni Doshi's prose also failed to impress me, but, like most of my criticisms here, I feel that might just be a matter of personal taste. I do see why this book has been so critically well-received, it just really wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Abrams for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.