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A review by sydsnot71
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
2.0
I'm not sure if I liked this book or not. It is certainly well-crafted, but I couldn't get as emotionally attached to it as I would have wanted. Perhaps that is intentional, there is something emotionally distanced in Antara, the narrator which seems to have come out of her experiences as a child.
The book is set in Pune, India. Antara's mother has dementia and through the course of the book is getting progressively lost. She doesn't speak to her father often. She is married to Dilip, whose Indian parents moved to America, where he has lived his whole life until he came to Pune for work. The book tells Antara's story through her mother's failing mental health. It is told through flashbacks and you have to admire Avni Doshi's control of the story. It manages to twist and turn through events and time without losing a coherent sense of where the story is going.
In the end, it wasn't a book I loved. I enjoyed it. I never wanted to stop reading it but I couldn't get swallowed up by it. That, as usual, might be me. But you can't love everything.
The book is set in Pune, India. Antara's mother has dementia and through the course of the book is getting progressively lost. She doesn't speak to her father often. She is married to Dilip, whose Indian parents moved to America, where he has lived his whole life until he came to Pune for work. The book tells Antara's story through her mother's failing mental health. It is told through flashbacks and you have to admire Avni Doshi's control of the story. It manages to twist and turn through events and time without losing a coherent sense of where the story is going.
In the end, it wasn't a book I loved. I enjoyed it. I never wanted to stop reading it but I couldn't get swallowed up by it. That, as usual, might be me. But you can't love everything.