Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Burnt Sugar

A strong, raw exploration of motherhood and trauma through Antara's troubled eyes. Even though the book is very specifically focused on her individual struggle with her past and her complex, toxic relationship with her mother, there is much about her experience that is universal. The description of those feelings - of insufficiency, of stagnation, of bottled anger and unmet needs, of desperation and entrapment - is really what makes this novel, and drives it directly to the heart.

Content Warnings

savvylit's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Burnt Sugar's opening sentence sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the novel: "I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure." What follows that powerful confession is a brutal, raw take on a deeply toxic mother-daughter relationship. From that first sentence until the last, I found myself repeatedly cringing over Antara's seemingly endless suffering and alienation.

The character-driven nature of this story brings the ramifications of intergenerational trauma and neglect into stark relief. Tara is an irredeemably awful mother. Her intense narcissism rears its ugly head over and over again, forcing Antara to always feel as though she is an extension of her mother instead of her own autonomous person. Thus, when her mother loses her memory Antara loses not only her mother but herself. Doshi beautifully describes their intertwined lives in this book, keeping a very dark story continuously compelling.

If you are a fan of dark character-driven novels and poetic writing, add Burnt Sugar to your list!

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writtenontheflyleaves's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi ✏️
🌟🌟🌟🌟

✏️ The plot: Antara's mother Tara is forgetting things. They've never had a good relationship and now not only does Tara need Antara's help, but she doesn't remember the cruelties she inflicted upon her daughter that make her so bitter towards her. As her mother's memory frays, so does Antara's grip on her own identity, and she becomes aware of how heavily she and her mother rely on each other to know themselves.

Burnt Sugar was a mixed bag. It's an apt title for what is a very bitter love story between a mother and daughter, and I think there's something very truthful in the double bind Antara is in throughout. I think it's often in the relationships where we feel the deepest love and need for the other person that we also feel the strongest resentment and anger towards them, and Doshi conveyed that brilliantly, and in gorgeous prose. I really wanted to love it.

But, if I'm being honest, I didn't love it, or at least not all of it. At the start, the narration felt kind of detached and resigned, which worked well for the character but as a reader it felt a bit like the usual bored-sounding literary fiction stuff. Once I got to read more about Tara's youth and Antara's childhood, I became deeply invested, finally feeling like I got a sense of what they meant to each other - then I was spat out of it again at the end, back into Antara's problems with her husband and a pregnancy that didn't totally make sense to me except as a conclusion to the themes of the book. There's something real and alive in this novel that I loved, I just lost the thread of it I think.

✏️ Read it if you like to read about complicated parental relationships and particularly how mothers and daughters shape each other's identities. The descriptions of the setting in Pune, India are also super vivid.

🚫 Avoid if pregnancy, childhood abuse and neglect, and dementia are themes you're avoiding in your reading right now, and if you want a sliver of hope to emerge out of themes of bitterness and anger!

Content Warnings

aaminak's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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jesshindes's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I was bought this last year (by my mum, obv) and it turned out to be a good companion piece to Nightbitch. It's another book about motherhood, this time from the perspective of a child whose mother hasn't given her the kind of care or security she needed. Now that mother is old and needs care herself, and the narrator is forced to reckon with the fact that a lot of her feelings are never going to be resolved. It's quite an unhappy little book but I liked it for its complicated picture of motherhood and womanhood (it might sit well against The Lost Daughter, too) and for its detailed depiction of its world and characters. It's one of those books that are saturated in sensory detail, which can be beautiful but is often flat out gross (reminding me of an article that I saw circulating on twitter recently about Disgusting Women in recent novels). Idk if Antara is a disgusting woman but Doshi definitely isn't afraid to be pretty blunt when describing, for example, her narrator's teenage self. That stylistic choice makes sense with the content: it's a novel that doesn't pretty things up. Burnt Sugar: not so sweet.

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