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Жженый сахар
«Жженый сахар» — история о любви, непонимании и предательстве. Но не между любовниками, а между матерью и дочерью. Авни Доши поднимает острую и болезненную тему, которая до сих пор отчасти табуирована в обществе.
Главных героинь разделяют годы и совершенно разный жизненный опыт, но объединяет нерушимая естественная связь, которая становится для них в конечном счете разрушающей.
Главных героинь разделяют годы и совершенно разный жизненный опыт, но объединяет нерушимая естественная связь, которая становится для них в конечном счете разрушающей.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,075 reviews
July 30, 2022
DNFed at page 95/268.
The end.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. Maybe I don't care anymore for book awards.
This book is disgusting. The writing pace and style is fine, easy to get into and simple. But it's the haphazard narration that becomes too much in the subsequent chapters that makes the reading go nowhere. And what's with all that focus on descriptions of body secretions and waste, more focus on sexual stuffs (more disgustingly thinking of fking her own father thinking her father may see her mother on her face! And that's when I DNFed the book), more interest in describing excreta and such disgusting details, more interest in describing the dirty places on the road and such places, more interest in talking about rotten things and dying puppies and animals? There's more. And these things are not at all relevant to the story. Random characters are introduced now and then but their roles are quite not defined and somehow always lead to something sexual for no reason. This book is so damn dilusional and problematic.
Characters being weird is one thing. Characters being disgusting is another.
The relationships are so unrealistically represented. I have read and will read many stories about dysfunctional families, marriages and relationships but this one is the worse till date. The characters seem like posters with no personalities. And yes, we don't need to discuss the molecular structures of chemicals that cause Alzheimer's or the 'KREB' (it's Krebs cycle by the way 😒) mechanism to relate the story. That's totally unnecessary and that's not research related to the condition. The causes, the maybe possible ones, or the situations and events are, which are thoroughly lacking in the story.
The narration tends to get high on these things mentioned every other page.
I stopped caring about the characters or the story (whatever there's left!) because I felt like I was really wasting my time reading this book.
Done.
Thank you, next 💁
The end.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020. Maybe I don't care anymore for book awards.
This book is disgusting. The writing pace and style is fine, easy to get into and simple. But it's the haphazard narration that becomes too much in the subsequent chapters that makes the reading go nowhere. And what's with all that focus on descriptions of body secretions and waste, more focus on sexual stuffs (more disgustingly thinking of fking her own father thinking her father may see her mother on her face! And that's when I DNFed the book), more interest in describing excreta and such disgusting details, more interest in describing the dirty places on the road and such places, more interest in talking about rotten things and dying puppies and animals? There's more. And these things are not at all relevant to the story. Random characters are introduced now and then but their roles are quite not defined and somehow always lead to something sexual for no reason. This book is so damn dilusional and problematic.
Characters being weird is one thing. Characters being disgusting is another.
The relationships are so unrealistically represented. I have read and will read many stories about dysfunctional families, marriages and relationships but this one is the worse till date. The characters seem like posters with no personalities. And yes, we don't need to discuss the molecular structures of chemicals that cause Alzheimer's or the 'KREB' (it's Krebs cycle by the way 😒) mechanism to relate the story. That's totally unnecessary and that's not research related to the condition. The causes, the maybe possible ones, or the situations and events are, which are thoroughly lacking in the story.
The narration tends to get high on these things mentioned every other page.
I stopped caring about the characters or the story (whatever there's left!) because I felt like I was really wasting my time reading this book.
Done.
Thank you, next 💁
November 18, 2021
“Human degeneration halts and sputters but doesn’t reverse.”
I suspect I read this at a bad time - when I’m already fairly disgusted with a large portion of the population; dispirited about the lack of humanity in so many people. This rubbed a bit of salt in the wound. I finished reading it nearly a month ago and am just now getting around to writing this review. Looking back at my notes depressed me a little further. I’m going to need some hot cocoa and a fuzzy kitten to cuddle with after I push the “post” button.
“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.”
What attracted me to this novel in the first place was that I’m always fascinated by mother-daughter relationships. I am a daughter and a mother. My bond with my mother is very complex. That with my daughter is loving and fairly pain-free. Lucky me, as my daughter just happens to be a teenager. This story is about a toxic relationship between a mother and a daughter. Antara, the daughter, has suffered both physically and emotionally at the hands of her mother her entire life. Now, when her mother’s health is deteriorating, she is called upon to become the caretaker that her mother never was for her. A good premise for a novel, but that’s where my appreciation pretty much ends.
The timeline alternates between present day and scenes from Antara’s childhood. The shifts were abrupt. The story is told in the first-person, with Antara as the narrator. She is cold and matter of fact. I never could warm up to her. I wanted to empathize with her pain. After all, there were some (minor) points between mother and daughter I could relate to on some level. Fear of abandonment, the overly critical eye of a mother, the occasional suicidal ‘threats’ that make for a child’s wish to always please at any cost. But I couldn’t muster up any compassion for Antara. Perhaps because I simply could not relate to the adult version she has become.
“When I look back on those days, I wonder did she ever see me as a child she wanted to protect? Did she always see me as a competitor or, rather, an enemy?”
There were a few passages that I felt showed some of the potential in the writing here. There is an illuminating section on post-partum depression that I thought was penned with chilling authenticity, but that alone wasn’t enough to inspire me overall. As far as mother-daughter bonds and all their intricacies, please pick up My Name is Lucy Barton instead. You’ll want to cry on Lucy’s shoulder by the time you’re done. With Burnt Sugar, you’ll feel much like the piece of haddock I’ve let grow cold on the plate next to me while drafting this review.
“These tales have been passed down from mothers to daughters since women had mouths and stories could be told. They contain some moral message, some rites of passage. But they also transfer that feeling all mothers know before their time is done. Guilt.”
I suspect I read this at a bad time - when I’m already fairly disgusted with a large portion of the population; dispirited about the lack of humanity in so many people. This rubbed a bit of salt in the wound. I finished reading it nearly a month ago and am just now getting around to writing this review. Looking back at my notes depressed me a little further. I’m going to need some hot cocoa and a fuzzy kitten to cuddle with after I push the “post” button.
“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.”
What attracted me to this novel in the first place was that I’m always fascinated by mother-daughter relationships. I am a daughter and a mother. My bond with my mother is very complex. That with my daughter is loving and fairly pain-free. Lucky me, as my daughter just happens to be a teenager. This story is about a toxic relationship between a mother and a daughter. Antara, the daughter, has suffered both physically and emotionally at the hands of her mother her entire life. Now, when her mother’s health is deteriorating, she is called upon to become the caretaker that her mother never was for her. A good premise for a novel, but that’s where my appreciation pretty much ends.
The timeline alternates between present day and scenes from Antara’s childhood. The shifts were abrupt. The story is told in the first-person, with Antara as the narrator. She is cold and matter of fact. I never could warm up to her. I wanted to empathize with her pain. After all, there were some (minor) points between mother and daughter I could relate to on some level. Fear of abandonment, the overly critical eye of a mother, the occasional suicidal ‘threats’ that make for a child’s wish to always please at any cost. But I couldn’t muster up any compassion for Antara. Perhaps because I simply could not relate to the adult version she has become.
“When I look back on those days, I wonder did she ever see me as a child she wanted to protect? Did she always see me as a competitor or, rather, an enemy?”
There were a few passages that I felt showed some of the potential in the writing here. There is an illuminating section on post-partum depression that I thought was penned with chilling authenticity, but that alone wasn’t enough to inspire me overall. As far as mother-daughter bonds and all their intricacies, please pick up My Name is Lucy Barton instead. You’ll want to cry on Lucy’s shoulder by the time you’re done. With Burnt Sugar, you’ll feel much like the piece of haddock I’ve let grow cold on the plate next to me while drafting this review.
“These tales have been passed down from mothers to daughters since women had mouths and stories could be told. They contain some moral message, some rites of passage. But they also transfer that feeling all mothers know before their time is done. Guilt.”
September 15, 2020
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020.
DNFed at 45%.
I cannot go on with this farce so full of caricature like depictions of human relationships, Indians and Western hippies anymore. I cannot read another sentence about the protagonist's terrible mother, her childhood abuse, her meandering thoughts about stray dogs, dogs having sex, sickness, forgetfulness, the filth in India and her insufferable NRI husband.
For a book that has been hailed as "complex", this was just so devoid of what matters the most to me in fiction: a compelling voice. The emotions forced upon me seemed so artificial and caustic, the characters were all anxiety inducing and what's with the casual mentions of the protagonist wanting to fuck her estranged father while her stepmother makes tea? Listen, if I wanted to watch some good incestuous sex, I'd just use Pornhub. This wasn't even good, it was just a pointless digression mentioned in an almost algorithmic tone.
I did my research, okay? I had my doubts about this book even before I started it. Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey, was raised mostly in America, and she currently lives in Dubai with her husband. She barely lived in India, yet the entirety of her story is set here. The India she describes is not the one most of its middle and lower class population live in. It's India as westerners and NRIs see it, it's the India that capitalist, globalization-driven international intellectuals who've never set a foot here envisage.
I have my lovely friend Jen to thank for gifting me copies of this book and The New Wilderness. Special thanks with a bear hug because she remembered that I was looking for a copy of Burnt Sugar and surprised me with it, long after I gave up my search for it. I have been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of human compassion and kindness for years now, but each time I am left marveling at its nature and scope. Mwah, Jen!
DNFed at 45%.
I cannot go on with this farce so full of caricature like depictions of human relationships, Indians and Western hippies anymore. I cannot read another sentence about the protagonist's terrible mother, her childhood abuse, her meandering thoughts about stray dogs, dogs having sex, sickness, forgetfulness, the filth in India and her insufferable NRI husband.
For a book that has been hailed as "complex", this was just so devoid of what matters the most to me in fiction: a compelling voice. The emotions forced upon me seemed so artificial and caustic, the characters were all anxiety inducing and what's with the casual mentions of the protagonist wanting to fuck her estranged father while her stepmother makes tea? Listen, if I wanted to watch some good incestuous sex, I'd just use Pornhub. This wasn't even good, it was just a pointless digression mentioned in an almost algorithmic tone.
I did my research, okay? I had my doubts about this book even before I started it. Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey, was raised mostly in America, and she currently lives in Dubai with her husband. She barely lived in India, yet the entirety of her story is set here. The India she describes is not the one most of its middle and lower class population live in. It's India as westerners and NRIs see it, it's the India that capitalist, globalization-driven international intellectuals who've never set a foot here envisage.
I have my lovely friend Jen to thank for gifting me copies of this book and The New Wilderness. Special thanks with a bear hug because she remembered that I was looking for a copy of Burnt Sugar and surprised me with it, long after I gave up my search for it. I have been fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of human compassion and kindness for years now, but each time I am left marveling at its nature and scope. Mwah, Jen!
June 12, 2023
bought a book because it was cheap and pretty again...
and this time, the expression "don't judge a book by its cover" won.
i've read a lot of books exploring the relationship between mother and daughter recently, and i've read a lot of literary fiction that dares to be difficult lately, and the setup of both of those comparisons was to this book's detriment.
it wasn't necessarily terrible, in and of itself, but it wasn't memorable, and it didn't hold up in the lineup.
bottom line: meh.
and this time, the expression "don't judge a book by its cover" won.
i've read a lot of books exploring the relationship between mother and daughter recently, and i've read a lot of literary fiction that dares to be difficult lately, and the setup of both of those comparisons was to this book's detriment.
it wasn't necessarily terrible, in and of itself, but it wasn't memorable, and it didn't hold up in the lineup.
bottom line: meh.
March 10, 2021
Now longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize.
I read the book following its earlier shortlisting for the 2020 Booker Prize and based on that did not feel the book had the coherency to be a worthy Booker winner. Similarly I would not want to see it win the Women's Prize.
I read this book (which was originally published in India as “Girl in White Cotton” (*)) due to its longlisting for the 2020 Booker Prize: an intriguing longlist noticeable for (per the Booker website) featuring 9 US based authors, 9 female authors and 8 debutant novelists – with this book representing one of the 4 books at the intersection of that Venn diagram : albeit the US born author of this novel now lives in Dubai.
(*) The author has said that her UK publisher "felt white cotton had different connotations outside of India, and readers wouldn’t immediately understand the connection to grief and asceticism
The book is narrated in the first person by Antara, who lives in Pune, India with her US born husband but whose defining relationship is with her mother Tara.
When Antara was young, Tara left her husband and for several years lived at an Ashram as the disciple and mistress of the legendary guru – becoming estranged as a result not just from her husband and parents but also from the young Antara, in a breech that never properly healed.
Now years later, Tara, who lives alone, is starting to suffer the early signs of dementia and Antara forced into the role of a carer, a role made harder by her lifelong difficult relationship with her mother. Ironically just as her mother starts to lose her memory and grip on reality, Antara is forced to confront the reality of her own past behaviour and its implications for her marriage. This tension is exacerbated by two other generations: Tara’s own mother (still living independently and whose memory of history does not always align with the story that Antara has told herself) and Antara’s new born daughter (whose arrival simultaneously causes post-partum depression in Antara and further unsettles Tara, who believes the girl to be her own baby i.e. Antara).
A key theme of the book (and one that makes it an interesting companion to the non-dystopian part of “The New Wilderness”) is its investigation of the relationship between mother and daughter and how it evolves for both parties from birth, through early attachment and nourishment to childhood independence, teenage rebellion, the daughter’s own motherhood and then to parental dependency.
Antara (Un-Tara) is deliberately named to be unlike and separated from her mother (“designated as her undoing”), but in fact entwined for life (“I often wished she had never been born, knowing this would wipe me out as well – I understood how deeply connected we were, and how her destruction would irrevocably lead to my own”): something that then happens as her mother’s own decline seems to be accompanied by her own uncertainty, then pregnancy to try and save things, and then post-partum depression.
Another key character in the novel is Kali Mata (once Eve) and she acts as something of a surrogate maternal figure for the young Antara in the Ashram sections; her name symbolically drawing on both Jewish and Hindu icons of ambiguous motherhood.
Other key ideas, very explicitly addressed in the book are:
- Memories/forgetting: How memories are crafted and built; how as well as being personal they are effectively in common (if disputed) ownership between those who first experience them; what are the implication for this common ownership if one of the owners begins to surrender possession?
Related to this is the concept of who gets to remember and tell a story - and as the book progresses we increasingly realise that Antara's narration is less than reliable and sense the cracks in the picture she presents of her mother and husband.
- Belonging/exclusion. As the opening quote identifies the Ashram gave Tara a sense of community and Antara a sense of exclusion from her previously nascent roots. Antara’s husband as an NRI feels like he does not fully belongs in India (with his Western ideas, snobberies and rather simplistic morals). A photojournalist lover of Tara, fleeing the Mumbai riots, is taken in by a family who he then marries in to, only to find that others later question his motives and the work he produces from it. And Antara/Tara's complex relationship is all about the tension between belonging and exclusion.
- Obsession – Antara in particular relentlessly catalogues and collects: sleights when she is a child; objects as she grows up; facts as she tries to understand her mother’s condition and does her own research into the links with diabetes and gut bacteria (something which has darker implications later)
- Art history/life. The author was an art critic and exhibition curator and ideas from art permeate both the book’s structure and its narrative. An art project that Antara has carried on for three years (see below) forms a key part of the tension in her relationships. Antara also uses art to try and come to terms with her research into dementia – sketching her research and ideas on papers. It is part of the meta-approach which permeates this novel that of course the author (whose grandmother’s own diagnosis with dementia part way through the writing of this novel gave it its final form) is using her own art form – novel writing – to capture her own research
The other concept that came out strongly to me in my reading of the book was the idea of a palimpsest in its broadest sense – of art or ideas being written on previous attempts.
We see it in the discussion of how memories are created and developed. There are references to the Brazilian 1920s avant-garde concept of “Anthropafagio” – the cannibalization of Western art. There is an exhibit based around artists re-interpreting “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (note this is I based I believe on an exhibit the author herself curated in Mumbai 2012: very much unlike her character “One Hundred Years of Solitude is not “a book I had never heard of, much less read” being in fact one of her favourite high school stories, and the idea of the insomnia plague that hits Macondo drove her initial idea of exploring the loss of memory and the idea of categorisation and labelling). At one stage Antara explores her Mother’s layers of clothes which set out the story of her life (wedding saris, bridal trousseau, Ashram robes). A key location is the Poona club – which the author represents as a key part of post-independence Indian society written over the legacy of colonialism. We see it in Antara’s crucial art project -a three year project to draw the same face each day, based only on copying the previous day’s painting.
And again referring to the very meta nature of this book – what I find interesting is that the novel itself can be seen in these terms. It was written over seven years in around 8 drafts – with different persons (first/third), tenses, narrators, voices and settings. And the author has I understand taken the old manuscripts and formed them into an art project - wrapping them around her husband’s golf balls (his idea as something that needs redoing every day, building on past failures and successes).
Overall I feel that this is one of the more ambiguous novels on the longlist.
At times humorous at times intense and almost voyeuristically uncomfortable.
On one level a relatively simple narrative, on the other one which weaves in a series of ideas and concepts - not just to that narrative but to the book's very conception.
It is one with a touch of the Eileen Moshfegh and which shows the literary influence (acknowledged by the author) of Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk.
However the author I was most reminded of was Ariana Harwicz and her excellent “Involuntary” trilogy.
Overall I found this a worthwhile and intriguing addition to the longlist.
My thanks to Hamish Hamilton for an ARC via NetGalley.
I read the book following its earlier shortlisting for the 2020 Booker Prize and based on that did not feel the book had the coherency to be a worthy Booker winner. Similarly I would not want to see it win the Women's Prize.
The whites are still bright, some glaring and some almost blue, the white of widows, of mourners and renunciants, holy men and women, monks and nuns, the white of those who no longer belong in the world, who have already put one foot on another plane. The white of the guru and his followers. Maybe Ma saw this white cotton as the means to her truth, a blank slate where she could remake herself and find the path to freedom. For me it was something different, a shroud that covered us like the living dead, a white too stark ever to be acceptable in polite society. A white that marked us as outsiders. To my mother this was the colour of her community, but I knew better: the white clothes were the ones that separated us from our family, our friends and everyone else, that made my life in them a kind of prison.
I read this book (which was originally published in India as “Girl in White Cotton” (*)) due to its longlisting for the 2020 Booker Prize: an intriguing longlist noticeable for (per the Booker website) featuring 9 US based authors, 9 female authors and 8 debutant novelists – with this book representing one of the 4 books at the intersection of that Venn diagram : albeit the US born author of this novel now lives in Dubai.
(*) The author has said that her UK publisher "felt white cotton had different connotations outside of India, and readers wouldn’t immediately understand the connection to grief and asceticism
The book is narrated in the first person by Antara, who lives in Pune, India with her US born husband but whose defining relationship is with her mother Tara.
When Antara was young, Tara left her husband and for several years lived at an Ashram as the disciple and mistress of the legendary guru – becoming estranged as a result not just from her husband and parents but also from the young Antara, in a breech that never properly healed.
Now years later, Tara, who lives alone, is starting to suffer the early signs of dementia and Antara forced into the role of a carer, a role made harder by her lifelong difficult relationship with her mother. Ironically just as her mother starts to lose her memory and grip on reality, Antara is forced to confront the reality of her own past behaviour and its implications for her marriage. This tension is exacerbated by two other generations: Tara’s own mother (still living independently and whose memory of history does not always align with the story that Antara has told herself) and Antara’s new born daughter (whose arrival simultaneously causes post-partum depression in Antara and further unsettles Tara, who believes the girl to be her own baby i.e. Antara).
A key theme of the book (and one that makes it an interesting companion to the non-dystopian part of “The New Wilderness”) is its investigation of the relationship between mother and daughter and how it evolves for both parties from birth, through early attachment and nourishment to childhood independence, teenage rebellion, the daughter’s own motherhood and then to parental dependency.
Antara (Un-Tara) is deliberately named to be unlike and separated from her mother (“designated as her undoing”), but in fact entwined for life (“I often wished she had never been born, knowing this would wipe me out as well – I understood how deeply connected we were, and how her destruction would irrevocably lead to my own”): something that then happens as her mother’s own decline seems to be accompanied by her own uncertainty, then pregnancy to try and save things, and then post-partum depression.
Talking has never been easy. Neither has listening. There was a breakdown somewhere about what we were to one another, as though one of us were not holding up her part of the bargain, her side of the bridge. Maybe the problem is that we are standing on the same side, looking out into the emptiness. Maybe we were hungry for the same things, the sum of us only doubled that feeling. And maybe this is it, the hole in the heart of it, a deformity from which we can never recover.
If our conversations were itineraries, they would show us always returning to this vacant cul-de-sac, one we cannot escape from.
Another key character in the novel is Kali Mata (once Eve) and she acts as something of a surrogate maternal figure for the young Antara in the Ashram sections; her name symbolically drawing on both Jewish and Hindu icons of ambiguous motherhood.
Other key ideas, very explicitly addressed in the book are:
- Memories/forgetting: How memories are crafted and built; how as well as being personal they are effectively in common (if disputed) ownership between those who first experience them; what are the implication for this common ownership if one of the owners begins to surrender possession?
He says my mother and I have always shared some version of our objective reality. Without me, her ties to that may have loosened, sad, but true – yet on the other hand, as a caregiver, the distance might be good for me. It is difficult when everything starts to vanish. He says memory is a work in progress. It’s always being reconstructed.
‘Reality is something that is co-authored,’ the woman says. ‘It makes sense that you would begin to find this disturbing. When someone says that something is not what you think of it as, it can cause slight tremors in the brain, variations in brain activity, and subconscious doubts begin to emerge. Why do you think people experience spiritual awakenings? It’s because the people around us are engaged. The frenzy is a charge that’s contagious.’ ‘Are you saying my mother is contagious?’ ‘No, I’m not. Though maybe I am, in a sense. We actively make memories, you know. And we make them together. We remake memories, too, in the image of what other people remember.’ ‘The doctor says my mother has become unreliable.’ ‘We are all unreliable. The past seems to have a vigour that the present does not.��
Related to this is the concept of who gets to remember and tell a story - and as the book progresses we increasingly realise that Antara's narration is less than reliable and sense the cracks in the picture she presents of her mother and husband.
- Belonging/exclusion. As the opening quote identifies the Ashram gave Tara a sense of community and Antara a sense of exclusion from her previously nascent roots. Antara’s husband as an NRI feels like he does not fully belongs in India (with his Western ideas, snobberies and rather simplistic morals). A photojournalist lover of Tara, fleeing the Mumbai riots, is taken in by a family who he then marries in to, only to find that others later question his motives and the work he produces from it. And Antara/Tara's complex relationship is all about the tension between belonging and exclusion.
This contempt still draws up the moment I feel uncomfortable. I disown so I can never be disowned.
- Obsession – Antara in particular relentlessly catalogues and collects: sleights when she is a child; objects as she grows up; facts as she tries to understand her mother’s condition and does her own research into the links with diabetes and gut bacteria (something which has darker implications later)
- Art history/life. The author was an art critic and exhibition curator and ideas from art permeate both the book’s structure and its narrative. An art project that Antara has carried on for three years (see below) forms a key part of the tension in her relationships. Antara also uses art to try and come to terms with her research into dementia – sketching her research and ideas on papers. It is part of the meta-approach which permeates this novel that of course the author (whose grandmother’s own diagnosis with dementia part way through the writing of this novel gave it its final form) is using her own art form – novel writing – to capture her own research
The other concept that came out strongly to me in my reading of the book was the idea of a palimpsest in its broadest sense – of art or ideas being written on previous attempts.
We see it in the discussion of how memories are created and developed. There are references to the Brazilian 1920s avant-garde concept of “Anthropafagio” – the cannibalization of Western art. There is an exhibit based around artists re-interpreting “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (note this is I based I believe on an exhibit the author herself curated in Mumbai 2012: very much unlike her character “One Hundred Years of Solitude is not “a book I had never heard of, much less read” being in fact one of her favourite high school stories, and the idea of the insomnia plague that hits Macondo drove her initial idea of exploring the loss of memory and the idea of categorisation and labelling). At one stage Antara explores her Mother’s layers of clothes which set out the story of her life (wedding saris, bridal trousseau, Ashram robes). A key location is the Poona club – which the author represents as a key part of post-independence Indian society written over the legacy of colonialism. We see it in Antara’s crucial art project -a three year project to draw the same face each day, based only on copying the previous day’s painting.
And again referring to the very meta nature of this book – what I find interesting is that the novel itself can be seen in these terms. It was written over seven years in around 8 drafts – with different persons (first/third), tenses, narrators, voices and settings. And the author has I understand taken the old manuscripts and formed them into an art project - wrapping them around her husband’s golf balls (his idea as something that needs redoing every day, building on past failures and successes).
Overall I feel that this is one of the more ambiguous novels on the longlist.
At times humorous at times intense and almost voyeuristically uncomfortable.
On one level a relatively simple narrative, on the other one which weaves in a series of ideas and concepts - not just to that narrative but to the book's very conception.
It is one with a touch of the Eileen Moshfegh and which shows the literary influence (acknowledged by the author) of Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk.
However the author I was most reminded of was Ariana Harwicz and her excellent “Involuntary” trilogy.
Overall I found this a worthwhile and intriguing addition to the longlist.
My thanks to Hamish Hamilton for an ARC via NetGalley.
And even now, when I am without her, when I want to be without her, when I know her presence is the source of my unhappiness – that learned longing still rises, that craving for soft, white cotton that has frayed at the edge.
November 28, 2021
Now Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
Avni Doshi's debut is a feminist novel set in modern-day India that ponders motherhood, memory, and the change of roles from being a daughter to becoming a caregiver for an elderly mother. The main character and narrator is Antara who is faced with the fact that her mother Tara's memory is starting to fail her. While the young woman is trying to figure out whether her career as a visual artist will ever take off and where her marriage is going, she ponders what to do with her mother, a strong-willed, free-spirited and often selfish woman with whom she has always had a strained relationship. When Antara finally gives birth to a daughter of her own, she struggles with post-partum depression...
Doshi has split her book in two alternating storylines, one about the events outlined above and one chronologically re-telling Antara's childhood, especially the time she spent in an ashram after her mother left her father to become the lover of a guru. The author does a great job evoking a particular cultural and social climate, and she cleverly shows a protagonist who suffered under her mother's self-centered version of self-actualization without declaring that a more conservative approach is the solution - in fact, there is no general solution. None of these characters are flawless; I would even claim that none of the characters are particularly likeable (which is not a deficit of the text: It's often the less likeable characters who can be deeply interesting).
Still, the story failed to completely captivate me and about halfway through, the text started to drag. The pacing is uneven, the construction is not particularly elegant (the two storylines simply alternate) and the story relies on a myriad of well-known themes: Classism? Check. Religious tension in India? Check. Beggars and gurus in India? Check. The overbearing mother-in-law? Check. The emotionally stinted husband? Check.
What I really appreciated though was the fearless portrayal of the complicated feelings a caregiver can experience if trying to care for a person they have a difficult relationship with, and the anger and helplessness that stems from the feeling of being inadequate in this role or from being taken for granted while the sick person is showered with understanding and pity (many caregivers start to suffer from depression and exhaustion because their needs tend to get ignored). Also, the portrayal of post-partum depression is effectively harrowing in its directness (unfortunately, the author herself has suffered from this condition).
So all in all, this is a promising and interesting debut and I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure whether this should be shortlisted (I haven't read the whole longlist yet) and for me, it's definitely not a Booker winner.
Update: While I was right about the Booker, the novel sold over 150.000 copies worldwide, and the translation rights have been sold to 26 countries (German translation: Bitterer Zucker). Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta is currently working on a movie adaptation.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
Avni Doshi's debut is a feminist novel set in modern-day India that ponders motherhood, memory, and the change of roles from being a daughter to becoming a caregiver for an elderly mother. The main character and narrator is Antara who is faced with the fact that her mother Tara's memory is starting to fail her. While the young woman is trying to figure out whether her career as a visual artist will ever take off and where her marriage is going, she ponders what to do with her mother, a strong-willed, free-spirited and often selfish woman with whom she has always had a strained relationship. When Antara finally gives birth to a daughter of her own, she struggles with post-partum depression...
Doshi has split her book in two alternating storylines, one about the events outlined above and one chronologically re-telling Antara's childhood, especially the time she spent in an ashram after her mother left her father to become the lover of a guru. The author does a great job evoking a particular cultural and social climate, and she cleverly shows a protagonist who suffered under her mother's self-centered version of self-actualization without declaring that a more conservative approach is the solution - in fact, there is no general solution. None of these characters are flawless; I would even claim that none of the characters are particularly likeable (which is not a deficit of the text: It's often the less likeable characters who can be deeply interesting).
Still, the story failed to completely captivate me and about halfway through, the text started to drag. The pacing is uneven, the construction is not particularly elegant (the two storylines simply alternate) and the story relies on a myriad of well-known themes: Classism? Check. Religious tension in India? Check. Beggars and gurus in India? Check. The overbearing mother-in-law? Check. The emotionally stinted husband? Check.
What I really appreciated though was the fearless portrayal of the complicated feelings a caregiver can experience if trying to care for a person they have a difficult relationship with, and the anger and helplessness that stems from the feeling of being inadequate in this role or from being taken for granted while the sick person is showered with understanding and pity (many caregivers start to suffer from depression and exhaustion because their needs tend to get ignored). Also, the portrayal of post-partum depression is effectively harrowing in its directness (unfortunately, the author herself has suffered from this condition).
So all in all, this is a promising and interesting debut and I'm glad that I read it, but I'm not sure whether this should be shortlisted (I haven't read the whole longlist yet) and for me, it's definitely not a Booker winner.
Update: While I was right about the Booker, the novel sold over 150.000 copies worldwide, and the translation rights have been sold to 26 countries (German translation: Bitterer Zucker). Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta is currently working on a movie adaptation.
August 27, 2021
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Burnt Sugar is one of the worst books I've read in 2020. If you were able to appreciate this novel, I'm glad. This may be one of those 'it's me, not you' cases...or maybe I've read too many stories exploring a complex mother/daughter relationship. To be perfectly frank, I bloody hated this book. It was painfully intent on nauseating the reader. We get it, the human body is base (Julia Kristeva has been there and done that). Burnt Sugar is ripe with garish descriptions of the abject human body: we have bodily fluids and waste, failing bodies, changing bodies (pregnancies, puberty), body parts compared to food or objects (breasts like dough, buttocks like empty sacks).
The narrator of this novel, someone who was so remarkable I can no longer recall her name, is the classic disaffected woman who is alienated from everyone and everything. A few days before listening to Burnt Sugar I read Luster, a novel that features a similar type of character except that there the author manages to make her protagonist into a nuanced human being, one who isn't nice or extremely likeable but is nevertheless realistic and capable of moving the read.
But here, dio mio! The narrator comes across as petulant and myopic, understanding nothing about anything and no one. Readers are clearly not meant to like her but there are various scenes that try to elicit some sort of sympathy (the nuns mistreat her, her mother is mercurial, her 'silly' Indian-American husband is blind to her anguish) on her behalf. Except that I didn't.
The MC goes and on about her mother, but we never gain insight into her actual feelings towards her. The MC is happy detailing all the wrongs she has endured, and seems to insinuate that she has become such a stronza because of her mother. The whole thing is incredibly superficial. Here we have another mother who is 'hysterical' just because 'hysterical' mothers can make for some dramatic scenes.
Indian-Americans are portrayed as foolish and brainwashed. Everybody is nasty and disgusting. Ha-ha! Oh wait, that isn't quite 'caustic wit'. There were a few—and when I say a few, I mean two or three—phrases that under certain circumstances (if you are as high as a kite) may come across as slightly amusing, but for the most part the MC's cutting humour fell flat. Viewing everything as grotesque is hardly funny, and it gets tiring, fast.
I also found the author's treatment and portrayal of postnatal depression and dementia to be highly insensitive. The mother in question becomes 'monstrous', the type of character that one may expect in Victorian literature. Who cares about realism when you can write explicit and 'subversive' things for the sake of shock value?
I think this was an awful novel...and it seems that I'm in the minority. Who cares. If you want to read it or loved it, good for you. I'm glad I was able to return this audiobook and I sincerely doubt I will ever try reading anything by this author.
Books with believably fraught mother/daughter relationships featuring alienated, disaffect, or challenging main characters : You Exist Too Much, The Far Field.
Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads
Burnt Sugar is one of the worst books I've read in 2020. If you were able to appreciate this novel, I'm glad. This may be one of those 'it's me, not you' cases...or maybe I've read too many stories exploring a complex mother/daughter relationship. To be perfectly frank, I bloody hated this book. It was painfully intent on nauseating the reader. We get it, the human body is base (Julia Kristeva has been there and done that). Burnt Sugar is ripe with garish descriptions of the abject human body: we have bodily fluids and waste, failing bodies, changing bodies (pregnancies, puberty), body parts compared to food or objects (breasts like dough, buttocks like empty sacks).
The narrator of this novel, someone who was so remarkable I can no longer recall her name, is the classic disaffected woman who is alienated from everyone and everything. A few days before listening to Burnt Sugar I read Luster, a novel that features a similar type of character except that there the author manages to make her protagonist into a nuanced human being, one who isn't nice or extremely likeable but is nevertheless realistic and capable of moving the read.
But here, dio mio! The narrator comes across as petulant and myopic, understanding nothing about anything and no one. Readers are clearly not meant to like her but there are various scenes that try to elicit some sort of sympathy (the nuns mistreat her, her mother is mercurial, her 'silly' Indian-American husband is blind to her anguish) on her behalf. Except that I didn't.
The MC goes and on about her mother, but we never gain insight into her actual feelings towards her. The MC is happy detailing all the wrongs she has endured, and seems to insinuate that she has become such a stronza because of her mother. The whole thing is incredibly superficial. Here we have another mother who is 'hysterical' just because 'hysterical' mothers can make for some dramatic scenes.
Indian-Americans are portrayed as foolish and brainwashed. Everybody is nasty and disgusting. Ha-ha! Oh wait, that isn't quite 'caustic wit'. There were a few—and when I say a few, I mean two or three—phrases that under certain circumstances (if you are as high as a kite) may come across as slightly amusing, but for the most part the MC's cutting humour fell flat. Viewing everything as grotesque is hardly funny, and it gets tiring, fast.
I also found the author's treatment and portrayal of postnatal depression and dementia to be highly insensitive. The mother in question becomes 'monstrous', the type of character that one may expect in Victorian literature. Who cares about realism when you can write explicit and 'subversive' things for the sake of shock value?
I think this was an awful novel...and it seems that I'm in the minority. Who cares. If you want to read it or loved it, good for you. I'm glad I was able to return this audiobook and I sincerely doubt I will ever try reading anything by this author.
Books with believably fraught mother/daughter relationships featuring alienated, disaffect, or challenging main characters : You Exist Too Much, The Far Field.
Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads
July 29, 2022
Al centro di "Zucchero bruciato" c'è una relazione carica di energie magmatiche, un topic che non si è ancora esaurito in letteratura: l'"amore molesto", ossessivo, competitivo con la madre, vista come soggetto ambiguo, inconoscibile, al limite del crudele e dell'invidioso. D'altra parte la madre è il primo termine di confronto con l'Altro, il nostro primo Doppio. Il legame tra madre e figlia è contraddistinto dall'ambivalente bisogno di somiglianza e indipendenza, conflitto e riconoscimento. La figlia - che ha un corredo biologico identico, un corpo simile e quindi un'immagine speculare - deve passare attraverso l’individualità della madre per crescere e formarsi, senza rimanerne imbrigliata o farsi dominare dalla matrofobia, la paura di diventare come la propria madre.
È un tipo di narrativa che ho imparato ad amare grazie ai libri di Morante e Ferrante. Di metafore materne è costellata la narrazione di entrambe le autrici. L'Origine è un luogo di amore e dolore, da cui distaccarsi e riavvicinarsi, spesso in una dinamica emotiva irrisolta. La casa d'origine - materna - diventa il teatro di quella che Morante chiama una «duplicità senza soluzione: dove l’amore e l’odio, la colpa e l’innocenza, si intrecciano». Tuttavia, se in entrambe le autrici, c'è il tentativo di ricucire un legame sfilacciato dal tempo, perché solo risanando il rapporto con le proprie origini c'è una reale emancipazione e una reale liberazione, in Doshi non c'è risoluzione.
La costruzione dell'intreccio è votato esclusivamente al conflitto, alla ricerca dell'angolo più affilato con picchi davvero intesi ma che via via perdono di efficacia, non riuscendo a restituire una geografia coerente, un luogo narrativo povero di complessità, fatto solo di spigoli. Se da un lato la sentenziosità della prosa aiuta a creare frasi potenti e stranianti, dall'altro non aiuta a sviluppare l'empatia e l'universo interiore dei personaggi che risultano un po' aridi. La scrittura asciutta non riesce a rendere la multidimensionalità del contesto indiano e tutte le sue sfaccettature, ci muoviamo in uno sfondo sufficientemente credibile ma superficiale, potrebbe essere ambientato in qualsiasi altra parte del mondo e non si sarebbe sentita la differenza.
Un romanzo d'esordio virtuoso che espone il tema "giusto" al momento giusto, in cui s'intravede un talento luminoso ma che non esplode. Da tenere d'occhio.
È un tipo di narrativa che ho imparato ad amare grazie ai libri di Morante e Ferrante. Di metafore materne è costellata la narrazione di entrambe le autrici. L'Origine è un luogo di amore e dolore, da cui distaccarsi e riavvicinarsi, spesso in una dinamica emotiva irrisolta. La casa d'origine - materna - diventa il teatro di quella che Morante chiama una «duplicità senza soluzione: dove l’amore e l’odio, la colpa e l’innocenza, si intrecciano». Tuttavia, se in entrambe le autrici, c'è il tentativo di ricucire un legame sfilacciato dal tempo, perché solo risanando il rapporto con le proprie origini c'è una reale emancipazione e una reale liberazione, in Doshi non c'è risoluzione.
La costruzione dell'intreccio è votato esclusivamente al conflitto, alla ricerca dell'angolo più affilato con picchi davvero intesi ma che via via perdono di efficacia, non riuscendo a restituire una geografia coerente, un luogo narrativo povero di complessità, fatto solo di spigoli. Se da un lato la sentenziosità della prosa aiuta a creare frasi potenti e stranianti, dall'altro non aiuta a sviluppare l'empatia e l'universo interiore dei personaggi che risultano un po' aridi. La scrittura asciutta non riesce a rendere la multidimensionalità del contesto indiano e tutte le sue sfaccettature, ci muoviamo in uno sfondo sufficientemente credibile ma superficiale, potrebbe essere ambientato in qualsiasi altra parte del mondo e non si sarebbe sentita la differenza.
Un romanzo d'esordio virtuoso che espone il tema "giusto" al momento giusto, in cui s'intravede un talento luminoso ma che non esplode. Da tenere d'occhio.
November 11, 2020
Can a child ever really know their mother and can a mother ever really know her child? Though we're made to feel there should be a natural, inextricable bond here it's seldom ever so simple. It certainly isn't for Antara, the narrator of Avni Doshi's heart-aching and intensely thoughtful novel “Burnt Sugar”. As an adult she finds herself in the tricky situation of caring for her mother Tara who is showing signs of dementia. But Antara seldom felt cared for as a child when her mother abandoned her unhappy arranged marriage, joined a religious commune, had a passionate affair with an unpredictable artist and spent some time living as a beggar on the street. Given their turbulent history together, Antara naturally feels ambivalent about being her mother's carer and confesses in the novel's opening line “I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure.” Painful emotions run deep throughout this narrative where Antara is haunted by her past and because of this burden struggles to negotiate her relationships with her husband Dilip, her often absent father and her mother in law. I felt intensely involved in this novel which asks poignant questions about the bonds of family and the nature of memory.
Read my full review of Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi on LonesomeReader
December 11, 2022
2.5 rounded up (Listened to the audiobook)
I was disappointed considering this book was shortlisted for the Booker prize. I found the character unbelievable and unrelatable. So much of it could have been more interesting but fell flat.
I was disappointed considering this book was shortlisted for the Booker prize. I found the character unbelievable and unrelatable. So much of it could have been more interesting but fell flat.
March 10, 2021
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 - I am quite pleased to see India represented.
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction
An intense and sometimes funny study of mother-daughter relationships, mostly set in the Indian city of Pune. The narrator Antara is the child of the wilful and impulsive divorcee Tara, who largely neglected her as a child. As a recently married young artist, Antara finds herself having to cope with a mother struggling with dementia.
As the back story emerges, it becomes clear that it is not just Tara whose memory is unreliable, and Tara's moments of clarity often embarrass her daughter. There is some humour too, though it is dark at times - Tara takes a very young Antara to an ashram, where she largely abandons her to pursue life as the guru's favourite mistress, and Antara spends a disastrous year in a Catholic boarding school. Tara starts an affair with an artist, and .
Neither woman is entirely sympathetic, but the writing is lively and after a slow start I found this an enjoyable read.
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction
An intense and sometimes funny study of mother-daughter relationships, mostly set in the Indian city of Pune. The narrator Antara is the child of the wilful and impulsive divorcee Tara, who largely neglected her as a child. As a recently married young artist, Antara finds herself having to cope with a mother struggling with dementia.
As the back story emerges, it becomes clear that it is not just Tara whose memory is unreliable, and Tara's moments of clarity often embarrass her daughter. There is some humour too, though it is dark at times - Tara takes a very young Antara to an ashram, where she largely abandons her to pursue life as the guru's favourite mistress, and Antara spends a disastrous year in a Catholic boarding school. Tara starts an affair with an artist, and .
Neither woman is entirely sympathetic, but the writing is lively and after a slow start I found this an enjoyable read.
January 19, 2021
“Burnt Sugar” is a work of extraordinary insight, courage and sophistication. It is also the world’s worst Mother’s Day present.
“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure,” the narrator begins. “The sympathy she elicits in others gives rise to something acrid in me.” This is a family tragedy laced with equal parts wit and strychnine.
It’s not that Doshi has written something no one has ever thought before; it’s that she’s written something no one has ever expressed so exquisitely — and so baldly.
The narrator is an Indian artist named Antara, whose mother is presenting symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The doctors offer only a dose of vague hope; there is no concrete diagnosis and certainly no cure. Hovering in the dusk of competency, Antara’s mother still manages to live alone, but increasingly she wanders, forgets where she is and what she’s doing. As her only child, Antara embraces the responsibility of caring for her with a determination threaded with resentment and even bouts of. . . .
Read the rest of this review in The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure,” the narrator begins. “The sympathy she elicits in others gives rise to something acrid in me.” This is a family tragedy laced with equal parts wit and strychnine.
It’s not that Doshi has written something no one has ever thought before; it’s that she’s written something no one has ever expressed so exquisitely — and so baldly.
The narrator is an Indian artist named Antara, whose mother is presenting symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The doctors offer only a dose of vague hope; there is no concrete diagnosis and certainly no cure. Hovering in the dusk of competency, Antara’s mother still manages to live alone, but increasingly she wanders, forgets where she is and what she’s doing. As her only child, Antara embraces the responsibility of caring for her with a determination threaded with resentment and even bouts of. . . .
Read the rest of this review in The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
September 17, 2020
This book and I failed to find that magic reader: writer chemistry.
I can't say if it was the evil-looking succulent on the lilac cover that did it - I certainly have a visceral dislike to looking at the cover even now. It might also be the intense reliance on olfactory descriptions for everything ( 67 uses of the word smell my search tells me ) it’s fine when that makes some kind of sense but often it was something frustratingly vapid like ;
“The room smells warmer, like my finger when I rub it in my navel “?
It might also be I could blame my lack of enjoyment upon my dyslexia for badly signposted timeline shifts. It does impact reading zen when you spend the first sentence of almost every paragraph determining if characters are now 5 or 35. ( This may be blamed upon a badly formatted e-book version, I will need to flick through a physical copy if I can get past the Evil Aloe )
I am being a little bit mean about this book, I can see its merits. It is a well-done portrait of a complicated mother, daughter relationship. Tara is potentially suffering from early-onset dementia and her daughter Antara reflects back on their life together. The setting of Pune, India is well done.
It is also nothing if not ambitious in the topics it covers. These being not limited to; mental health/caregiving/ ashram living/ boarding school violence / visual art / political riots / postnatal depression / an artists view of the Krebs cycle/ doodles of amyloid plaques/ pondering the islets of Langerhans. Occasionally this reads like someone who has gone down the rabbit hole on some pseudoscience about sugar and Alzheimer's.
Look there is a good book in here somewhere, but it needed more time in the oven. In the end, I realise my criticisms are entirely a matter of personal taste, but I would have pared this back to the key relationships, taken out the malodorous wadding.
As it stands this ended up being all rather unnecessarily exhausting and a head-scratching inclusion on a Booker list.
I can't say if it was the evil-looking succulent on the lilac cover that did it - I certainly have a visceral dislike to looking at the cover even now. It might also be the intense reliance on olfactory descriptions for everything ( 67 uses of the word smell my search tells me ) it’s fine when that makes some kind of sense but often it was something frustratingly vapid like ;
“The room smells warmer, like my finger when I rub it in my navel “?
It might also be I could blame my lack of enjoyment upon my dyslexia for badly signposted timeline shifts. It does impact reading zen when you spend the first sentence of almost every paragraph determining if characters are now 5 or 35. ( This may be blamed upon a badly formatted e-book version, I will need to flick through a physical copy if I can get past the Evil Aloe )
I am being a little bit mean about this book, I can see its merits. It is a well-done portrait of a complicated mother, daughter relationship. Tara is potentially suffering from early-onset dementia and her daughter Antara reflects back on their life together. The setting of Pune, India is well done.
It is also nothing if not ambitious in the topics it covers. These being not limited to; mental health/caregiving/ ashram living/ boarding school violence / visual art / political riots / postnatal depression / an artists view of the Krebs cycle/ doodles of amyloid plaques/ pondering the islets of Langerhans. Occasionally this reads like someone who has gone down the rabbit hole on some pseudoscience about sugar and Alzheimer's.
Look there is a good book in here somewhere, but it needed more time in the oven. In the end, I realise my criticisms are entirely a matter of personal taste, but I would have pared this back to the key relationships, taken out the malodorous wadding.
As it stands this ended up being all rather unnecessarily exhausting and a head-scratching inclusion on a Booker list.
August 11, 2020
Hallucinations, inhabiting the past, an archaic sense of self, a deep feeling of isolation. The present is seen for what it is, a fleck always slipping through the sieve.
Burnt Sugar opens with the striking line:
I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.
And goes on:
But now, I can’t even the tally between us. 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 the things she has done in the past, no way to baste her in guilt.
which immediately sets up two of the book’s main themes, difficult mother-daughter relationships and the unreliability of memory (whether Alzheimer’s induced, or selective).
The book was first published in India in 2019 under the title "Girl in White Cotton", the change for the UK edition, per the author, "a collaborative decision came after hearing my UK editor Hermione Thompson’s concerns about whether the original title would translate in the same way for a UK audience,” which was interesting, as the book generally had a flavour of being written for an international not local market, with a lot of description of the setting in Pune.
This is a debut novel, which had been through many iterations, and the author cites one key influence on the final version as a non-fiction piece she wrote for Harper’s Bazaar, “worked as a kind of spark for this draft of the novel– it offered me an entry point into my character.”
The piece (https://www.avnidoshi.com/a-feast-of-...) includes this anecdote about the author’s own grandmother:
In this novel, Antara, the first person narrator, shares with her grandmother the burden of her mother’s amnesia, including mis-remembering recipes, which she tries to stimulate by leaving notes in her house of significant moments in their life. But sometimes Antara’s own memories are flawed.
Nani is holding a crumpled piece of paper in her claw.
‘I was leaving notes for Ma around the house. So she can find them and read them. Maybe it will help her memory.’
Nani smiles. ‘You’re a good girl. Read it to me.’
I hesitate and press the scrap against my palm. In a few weeks, it has begun to look like ancient parchment. ‘The time you added chilli to Antara’s khichdi,’ I read.
Nani laughs, and coughs when I finish reading. ‘When was that?’
‘She wanted me to learn to eat spicy food, I guess. She wouldn’t stop, even though I developed a bad case of the hiccups.’
Nani shakes her head. ‘Your mother didn’t add the chilli to your khichdi. I added ginger to it because you had a very bad cold.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say. I was sure I remembered it, the taste of pain in my mouth.
‘I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘Have you asked her? She will tell you.’
I had read that one to Ma and she had looked at me vacantly before I stuffed it into the sofa for her to find again. ‘Even if I ask her,’ I say to Nani, ‘she doesn’t remember.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t remember because it never happened.’
The author has mentioned the influence on her writing of Levy, Offill, Cusk and Heti, of Lispector and Jaeggy, but also Marias and, notably, Garcia Marquez.
This was a novel that left with me mixed feeling. Antara herself is a complex and fascinating character, and her relationship with her mother, and their different memories of the past made for an excellent read, and it was linked neatly with Antara’s own artwork (based on the author’s own).
However, as often with debut novels, the author has tried to pack a lot of themes in. Unlike some of that ilk, the resulting novel is admirably compact in page count terms (c240 pages) but that means many of the themes and characters – the city of Pune, the ashram to which her mother decamped for several years when Antara was a young child to become the lover of the guru (based on the real-life Rajneesh), the women in the ashram who became a sort of surrogate mother, both women’s relationship with another artist, Antara’s husband and his aspirations to return overseas, even (a theme which was clearly key for the author) Antara’s own experience of motherhood – end up as fleeting themes; for example the last of these appears only in the last 10% of the novel. At times it felt like this would have worked better as a much shorter novel (with some themes left for future books) or the opposite i.e. a much longer work.
Nevertheless, a worthy inclusion on the Booker longlist and a striking debut. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
Interviews with the author:
https://fivedials.com/interviews/we-h...
https://thesoup.website/interviews/pa...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
https://www.badformreview.com/post/so...
https://elle.in/article/avni-doshi/
https://web.archive.org/web/201912080...
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20...
Burnt Sugar opens with the striking line:
I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.
And goes on:
But now, I can’t even the tally between us. 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 the things she has done in the past, no way to baste her in guilt.
which immediately sets up two of the book’s main themes, difficult mother-daughter relationships and the unreliability of memory (whether Alzheimer’s induced, or selective).
The book was first published in India in 2019 under the title "Girl in White Cotton", the change for the UK edition, per the author, "a collaborative decision came after hearing my UK editor Hermione Thompson’s concerns about whether the original title would translate in the same way for a UK audience,” which was interesting, as the book generally had a flavour of being written for an international not local market, with a lot of description of the setting in Pune.
This is a debut novel, which had been through many iterations, and the author cites one key influence on the final version as a non-fiction piece she wrote for Harper’s Bazaar, “worked as a kind of spark for this draft of the novel– it offered me an entry point into my character.”
The piece (https://www.avnidoshi.com/a-feast-of-...) includes this anecdote about the author’s own grandmother:
Nani is smiling, happy. I wish I could be happy, but I want too badly to remember all the flavours my grandmother has fed me, every dish that has come out of her kitchen, the ideal season for each vegetable. Our family comes together around my grandmother's kindness and her meals. From far away places, we make yearly pilgrimages to marvel that something can still taste so good. We share stories, hurl insults, we fight, and make up. Every bite is a memory.
But we knew something was wrong the day Nani couldn't remember a recipe. A simple Sindhi pickle, made with cauliflower, carrot, mustard, and rye. She used to know it like the back of her hand. The doctor says this is just the beginning, that eventually she will forget my name.
We are losing a little bit of her everyday. I tell my shrink my heart is breaking but the truth is I feel it most in my stomach, in the watery unease of my gut.
In this novel, Antara, the first person narrator, shares with her grandmother the burden of her mother’s amnesia, including mis-remembering recipes, which she tries to stimulate by leaving notes in her house of significant moments in their life. But sometimes Antara’s own memories are flawed.
Nani is holding a crumpled piece of paper in her claw.
‘I was leaving notes for Ma around the house. So she can find them and read them. Maybe it will help her memory.’
Nani smiles. ‘You’re a good girl. Read it to me.’
I hesitate and press the scrap against my palm. In a few weeks, it has begun to look like ancient parchment. ‘The time you added chilli to Antara’s khichdi,’ I read.
Nani laughs, and coughs when I finish reading. ‘When was that?’
‘She wanted me to learn to eat spicy food, I guess. She wouldn’t stop, even though I developed a bad case of the hiccups.’
Nani shakes her head. ‘Your mother didn’t add the chilli to your khichdi. I added ginger to it because you had a very bad cold.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say. I was sure I remembered it, the taste of pain in my mouth.
‘I’m telling you,’ she said. ‘Have you asked her? She will tell you.’
I had read that one to Ma and she had looked at me vacantly before I stuffed it into the sofa for her to find again. ‘Even if I ask her,’ I say to Nani, ‘she doesn’t remember.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t remember because it never happened.’
The author has mentioned the influence on her writing of Levy, Offill, Cusk and Heti, of Lispector and Jaeggy, but also Marias and, notably, Garcia Marquez.
As I was researching, I couldn’t help but return to One Hundred Years of Solitude where throughout the book you get a sense that a contagion of amnesia is taking over the village, generation by generation. It’s fantastical in the novel, but is remarkably like the experience of being with someone with Alzheimer’s.
This was a novel that left with me mixed feeling. Antara herself is a complex and fascinating character, and her relationship with her mother, and their different memories of the past made for an excellent read, and it was linked neatly with Antara’s own artwork (based on the author’s own).
However, as often with debut novels, the author has tried to pack a lot of themes in. Unlike some of that ilk, the resulting novel is admirably compact in page count terms (c240 pages) but that means many of the themes and characters – the city of Pune, the ashram to which her mother decamped for several years when Antara was a young child to become the lover of the guru (based on the real-life Rajneesh), the women in the ashram who became a sort of surrogate mother, both women’s relationship with another artist, Antara’s husband and his aspirations to return overseas, even (a theme which was clearly key for the author) Antara’s own experience of motherhood – end up as fleeting themes; for example the last of these appears only in the last 10% of the novel. At times it felt like this would have worked better as a much shorter novel (with some themes left for future books) or the opposite i.e. a much longer work.
Nevertheless, a worthy inclusion on the Booker longlist and a striking debut. 3.5 stars rounded to 4.
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
Interviews with the author:
https://fivedials.com/interviews/we-h...
https://thesoup.website/interviews/pa...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
https://www.badformreview.com/post/so...
https://elle.in/article/avni-doshi/
https://web.archive.org/web/201912080...
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20...
August 11, 2020
2.5, rounded up.
#5 for me in the Booker Marathon, and definitely my least favorite so far - which is doubly disappointing, as I am such a fan of South-Asian literature, and this was the one nominee I was most looking forward to reading. And perhaps if I hadn't just finished the stellar and transcendent Shuggie Bain, which ALSO focusses on mother/child conflict, I might have been more receptive to this.
Two things prevented me from really enjoying this - the (tired) structure of the two alternating time-lines always confuses me, and I had difficulty keeping everything straight. It probably didn't help that there are no chapter breaks, and the formatting on Kindle is such that I couldn't really tell when time frames were switched.
Secondly, the 'plot' (for lack of a better term, since there really isn't much of one) itself is not terribly innovative, interesting or involving - a series of 'hot topics' including feminist artists, infidelity, dementia, post-partum depression, Catholic boarding school hazing, ashram communal living, mother/daughter conflict, caregiver fatigue, etc. are all just thrown together higgledy-piggledy - all of which have been done before (and better), and none of which takes center stage for very long.
At about the 2/3 mark, reader fatigue set in, the story seemed particularly inert and I just wanted it to be over with. The ending did pick up a bit, but since I have little to no interest in reading about adjusting to motherhood, I was bored. To be fair, some of the earlier set-pieces were intermittently amusing, and the prose ranged from intriguing ("My vagina resembles a crime scene') to merely competent. All in all a major disappointment, and I'd be terribly surprised if it made the short list (... although my track record of my least liked nominees eventually winning the Booker should cheer up the author and the book's champions!)
PS the novel's original title of 'Girl in White Cotton' is very much more suited to the book - I am not even sure what the new title refers to, although there are some oblique references to the fact that sugar might be exacerbating the mother's dementia.
#5 for me in the Booker Marathon, and definitely my least favorite so far - which is doubly disappointing, as I am such a fan of South-Asian literature, and this was the one nominee I was most looking forward to reading. And perhaps if I hadn't just finished the stellar and transcendent Shuggie Bain, which ALSO focusses on mother/child conflict, I might have been more receptive to this.
Two things prevented me from really enjoying this - the (tired) structure of the two alternating time-lines always confuses me, and I had difficulty keeping everything straight. It probably didn't help that there are no chapter breaks, and the formatting on Kindle is such that I couldn't really tell when time frames were switched.
Secondly, the 'plot' (for lack of a better term, since there really isn't much of one) itself is not terribly innovative, interesting or involving - a series of 'hot topics' including feminist artists, infidelity, dementia, post-partum depression, Catholic boarding school hazing, ashram communal living, mother/daughter conflict, caregiver fatigue, etc. are all just thrown together higgledy-piggledy - all of which have been done before (and better), and none of which takes center stage for very long.
At about the 2/3 mark, reader fatigue set in, the story seemed particularly inert and I just wanted it to be over with. The ending did pick up a bit, but since I have little to no interest in reading about adjusting to motherhood, I was bored. To be fair, some of the earlier set-pieces were intermittently amusing, and the prose ranged from intriguing ("My vagina resembles a crime scene') to merely competent. All in all a major disappointment, and I'd be terribly surprised if it made the short list (... although my track record of my least liked nominees eventually winning the Booker should cheer up the author and the book's champions!)
PS the novel's original title of 'Girl in White Cotton' is very much more suited to the book - I am not even sure what the new title refers to, although there are some oblique references to the fact that sugar might be exacerbating the mother's dementia.
August 7, 2020
This is the book i came across due to its inclusion into Booker 2020 longlist. I am very interested in all aspects of India and its culture. So i was very happy to see the author with South Asian heritage and the story set in India in the list. Overall, my initial impression of this year's list was more positive than the usual as I did not know more than a half of the names there. I've made a list of the books I was interested in. Since then, my enthusiasm has cooled down somewhat as I realised that quite a few of these books were the type of confessional writing often based on the author's life. I do not mind it general, but after reading Real Life, i think i have enough for a while of the the sub-genre.
This book is confessional as well. It is also hyper-realistic and detailed. But the difference is that Avni has actually created a fictional story and fully developed a fictional character! That seems to be quite an achievement in the recent literary climate.
Though the story is fictional, the style is totally modern auto-fiction. Antara, the main character and the voice of the novel is dealing with her past and her mum who seems to be succumbing to the early dementia. The novel set in Puna, India. Antara is an artist. But her childhood was tricky. Her mum has ran to an ashram from her husband and her family taking 3 year old Antara. It has resulted in a childhood trauma for a little girl multiplied by a year in a dreadful catholic convent later. My understanding is her mum has had her quite young as well. All in all, their relationship never was easy. It was in the past, and even in the present it is very competitive, critical and easily moving from love to hate. At present, it is exacerbated by her mum's state. The book jumps backwards and forwards from Antara's childhood to the present moment.
There is a supportive cast of characters. But none of them are very strong, in my view. However, Antara's super-frank, unsentimental voice and her reflections, often angry, about herself or her mum have won me over.
Her similes sometimes made me wince: occasionally too much physiology for the sake of it (salivas, periods, perspiration being described and more). But the social commentary was interesting. And the ideas were quite profound in a way. It made me think how many of us, daughters, are starting our lives thinking that we will be everything opposite to our mums. But then, somehow notwithstanding, ending up more similar to them than different.
I did not think the last few chapters when Antara gave birth to her own daughter added much. It was very clearly inspired by Rachel Cask's Motherhood memories and they were not more insightful or new for that. Also it was one dark twist too many at the end for my liking. But overall, I enjoyed the energy of this.
This book is confessional as well. It is also hyper-realistic and detailed. But the difference is that Avni has actually created a fictional story and fully developed a fictional character! That seems to be quite an achievement in the recent literary climate.
Though the story is fictional, the style is totally modern auto-fiction. Antara, the main character and the voice of the novel is dealing with her past and her mum who seems to be succumbing to the early dementia. The novel set in Puna, India. Antara is an artist. But her childhood was tricky. Her mum has ran to an ashram from her husband and her family taking 3 year old Antara. It has resulted in a childhood trauma for a little girl multiplied by a year in a dreadful catholic convent later. My understanding is her mum has had her quite young as well. All in all, their relationship never was easy. It was in the past, and even in the present it is very competitive, critical and easily moving from love to hate. At present, it is exacerbated by her mum's state. The book jumps backwards and forwards from Antara's childhood to the present moment.
There is a supportive cast of characters. But none of them are very strong, in my view. However, Antara's super-frank, unsentimental voice and her reflections, often angry, about herself or her mum have won me over.
Her similes sometimes made me wince: occasionally too much physiology for the sake of it (salivas, periods, perspiration being described and more). But the social commentary was interesting. And the ideas were quite profound in a way. It made me think how many of us, daughters, are starting our lives thinking that we will be everything opposite to our mums. But then, somehow notwithstanding, ending up more similar to them than different.
I did not think the last few chapters when Antara gave birth to her own daughter added much. It was very clearly inspired by Rachel Cask's Motherhood memories and they were not more insightful or new for that. Also it was one dark twist too many at the end for my liking. But overall, I enjoyed the energy of this.
June 20, 2022
4,5*
Uma grande percentagem dos leitores do GR não gostaram ou desistiram deste livro, e eu compreendo-os: que há para gostar numa doença degenerativa que nos devora a personalidade como o Alzheimer?
I will lose her in increments. At the end, she will be a house I’ve moved out of, containing nothing that is familiar.
Que há para gostar numa infância pautada pela violência e pelo abandono?
Her voice would voice would rise, piercing through the air, and her hand or foot would find a way to come down on me. There were pinches, slaps, kicks, beatings, though now I can’t remember what they were in retaliation for.
Que há para gostar numa mulher que, quando chega a sua vez de ser mãe, se debate entre apertar o bebé para ele não se esquecer que foi acarinhado ou atirá-lo pela janela?
This is madness. I feel it – I inch towards it daily. But it’s a necessary madness without which the species might never propagate.
Esta não é a costumeira história da velhinha americana ou britânica na sua camisa de noite rendada, rodeada pela sua família extremosa, aquela velhinha amorosa que confunde tudo de uma forma tontinha, que pensa que o seu primeiro grande amor ainda está vivo e guarda algures a prova de um segredo do passado. “Açúcar Queimado” é hiper-realista e não se acanha na descrição de corpos reais nas suas funções mais essenciais e, passando-se na Índia, já adivinharam, tem moscas, miséria, cães sarnentos, gente a viver na rua, suor e sujidade. Mais uma vez, que há para gostar neste livro a menos que tenham capacidade de empatia com pessoas que agem de forma que vocês acham que nunca agiriam, ou que tenham passado por algo semelhante, ou que estejam dispostos a interrogar-se sobre os laços que unem pais e filhos, que muitas vezes são tão frouxos que é apenas o dever que os move.
I will never be free of her. She’s in my marrow and I’ll never be immune. What would Purvi’s husband say about a parasite so advanced that it makes a host of its own offspring?
Antara e a mãe só se têm uma à outra. Não há mais irmãos nem pai, porque Tara, uma jovem rebelde, abandonou o marido para seguir um guru até ao seu ashram, onde a protagonista passou os primeiros anos de vida, criada pela comunidade e com pouco contacto com a mãe que, quando aparecia, era geralmente para a espancar. Quando é enviada para um colégio de freiras pelos avós, que as recolhem depois de um tempo a viverem na rua, é basicamente analfabeta e sofre sevícias pelas suas dificuldades de aprendizagem e por ser filha de mãe divorciada.
Através da relação tensa entre mãe e filha, Avni Doshi levanta questões com que me debato sempre que ouço notícias de filhos que não fazem o que a sociedade espera deles. Como pode alguém ser bom filho de alguém que não foi bom progenitor? Como se pode condenar uma pessoa por não acolher um progenitor e cuidar dele quando não se sabe o que poderá ter sofrido enquanto vivia debaixo do seu tecto?
When she no longer has a complete consciousness of who she is and who I am, will it be possible for me to care for her the way I do now, or will I be negligent, the way we are with children who are not our own, or voiceless animals, or the mute, blind and deaf, believing we will get away with it, because decency is something we enact in public, with someone to witness and rate our actions.
Antara, no entanto, não vira costas à mãe. Leva-a ao neurologista, pesquisa tratamentos alternativos, trá-la para sua casa quando o seu comportamento começa a ser arriscado, mas é o que lhe passa pela cabeça que nos incomoda e é o fosso demasiado fundo entre elas que custa suportar.
I wish India allowed for assisted suicide like the Netherlands. Not just for the dignity of the patient, but for everyone involved. I should be sad instead of angry. Sometimes I cry when no one else is around – I am grieving, but it’s too early to burn the body.
“Açúcar Queimado” é um livro implacável e desconfortável que creio que só será bem recebido por um pequeno nicho de leitores.
Uma grande percentagem dos leitores do GR não gostaram ou desistiram deste livro, e eu compreendo-os: que há para gostar numa doença degenerativa que nos devora a personalidade como o Alzheimer?
I will lose her in increments. At the end, she will be a house I’ve moved out of, containing nothing that is familiar.
Que há para gostar numa infância pautada pela violência e pelo abandono?
Her voice would voice would rise, piercing through the air, and her hand or foot would find a way to come down on me. There were pinches, slaps, kicks, beatings, though now I can’t remember what they were in retaliation for.
Que há para gostar numa mulher que, quando chega a sua vez de ser mãe, se debate entre apertar o bebé para ele não se esquecer que foi acarinhado ou atirá-lo pela janela?
This is madness. I feel it – I inch towards it daily. But it’s a necessary madness without which the species might never propagate.
Esta não é a costumeira história da velhinha americana ou britânica na sua camisa de noite rendada, rodeada pela sua família extremosa, aquela velhinha amorosa que confunde tudo de uma forma tontinha, que pensa que o seu primeiro grande amor ainda está vivo e guarda algures a prova de um segredo do passado. “Açúcar Queimado” é hiper-realista e não se acanha na descrição de corpos reais nas suas funções mais essenciais e, passando-se na Índia, já adivinharam, tem moscas, miséria, cães sarnentos, gente a viver na rua, suor e sujidade. Mais uma vez, que há para gostar neste livro a menos que tenham capacidade de empatia com pessoas que agem de forma que vocês acham que nunca agiriam, ou que tenham passado por algo semelhante, ou que estejam dispostos a interrogar-se sobre os laços que unem pais e filhos, que muitas vezes são tão frouxos que é apenas o dever que os move.
I will never be free of her. She’s in my marrow and I’ll never be immune. What would Purvi’s husband say about a parasite so advanced that it makes a host of its own offspring?
Antara e a mãe só se têm uma à outra. Não há mais irmãos nem pai, porque Tara, uma jovem rebelde, abandonou o marido para seguir um guru até ao seu ashram, onde a protagonista passou os primeiros anos de vida, criada pela comunidade e com pouco contacto com a mãe que, quando aparecia, era geralmente para a espancar. Quando é enviada para um colégio de freiras pelos avós, que as recolhem depois de um tempo a viverem na rua, é basicamente analfabeta e sofre sevícias pelas suas dificuldades de aprendizagem e por ser filha de mãe divorciada.
Através da relação tensa entre mãe e filha, Avni Doshi levanta questões com que me debato sempre que ouço notícias de filhos que não fazem o que a sociedade espera deles. Como pode alguém ser bom filho de alguém que não foi bom progenitor? Como se pode condenar uma pessoa por não acolher um progenitor e cuidar dele quando não se sabe o que poderá ter sofrido enquanto vivia debaixo do seu tecto?
When she no longer has a complete consciousness of who she is and who I am, will it be possible for me to care for her the way I do now, or will I be negligent, the way we are with children who are not our own, or voiceless animals, or the mute, blind and deaf, believing we will get away with it, because decency is something we enact in public, with someone to witness and rate our actions.
Antara, no entanto, não vira costas à mãe. Leva-a ao neurologista, pesquisa tratamentos alternativos, trá-la para sua casa quando o seu comportamento começa a ser arriscado, mas é o que lhe passa pela cabeça que nos incomoda e é o fosso demasiado fundo entre elas que custa suportar.
I wish India allowed for assisted suicide like the Netherlands. Not just for the dignity of the patient, but for everyone involved. I should be sad instead of angry. Sometimes I cry when no one else is around – I am grieving, but it’s too early to burn the body.
“Açúcar Queimado” é um livro implacável e desconfortável que creio que só será bem recebido por um pequeno nicho de leitores.
November 13, 2020
I’m definitely not going to sugar coat my opinion about this... this... pile of crap!
Why would I care about this rambling mess and its even messier heartless bitch of a narrator?!
Why would anyone care, by the way?!
Yes, I know, I know, we’re all different and have different tastes and opinions and blah, blah, blah, blah, but I’d like to see someone reading this thing after the Booker Prize winner has been announced (even if this becomes the winner, which is completely possible if we think that this is 2020). I just can’t shake off a feeling that in a couple of months time NO ONE will ever pick up or remember this shameful waste of paper ever again.
I mean, it’s not like this was the most poorly written book I ever read (that honour belongs to American Dirt) but as a storyteller this author still has a looooong way to go.
Now, on a final note, I just want to remind the Booker Prize judges that literary prizes should (obviously) be about literature itself and not about authors’ nationalities and/or sexual orientation. We don’t need (more) politics and brainwashing in our lives, thank you very much.
Why would I care about this rambling mess and its even messier heartless bitch of a narrator?!
Why would anyone care, by the way?!
Yes, I know, I know, we’re all different and have different tastes and opinions and blah, blah, blah, blah, but I’d like to see someone reading this thing after the Booker Prize winner has been announced (even if this becomes the winner, which is completely possible if we think that this is 2020). I just can’t shake off a feeling that in a couple of months time NO ONE will ever pick up or remember this shameful waste of paper ever again.
I mean, it’s not like this was the most poorly written book I ever read (that honour belongs to American Dirt) but as a storyteller this author still has a looooong way to go.
Now, on a final note, I just want to remind the Booker Prize judges that literary prizes should (obviously) be about literature itself and not about authors’ nationalities and/or sexual orientation. We don’t need (more) politics and brainwashing in our lives, thank you very much.
November 5, 2021
Πριν λίγο καιρό η μάνα μου ξύπνησε, απενεργοποίησε τον συναγερμό χρησιμοποιώντας τον σωστό κωδικό, ξάπλωσε ξανά στο κρεβάτι της και δεν θυμόταν τίποτε. Για κάμποσα λεπτά δεν θυμόταν κανέναν. Ήξερε ότι ήταν παντρεμένη, όμως όχι το όνομα του πατέρα μου. Ότι είχε παιδιά, όμως όχι πόσα. Ξέρετε τι θυμήθηκε μόνο; Εμένα, μπίτσεζ.
Το θέμα με το παρελθόν είναι ότι ο καθένας έχει το δικό του, ακόμα κι αν το μοιράζεται με άλλους. Υπάρχουν τα γεγονότα, όμως ο καθένας τα βιώνει διαφορετικά και τα μεταφέρει στον χρόνο περνώντας τα από ένα σωρό προσωπικά φίλτρα, διαμορφώνοντας πεποιθήσεις που κρυσταλλώνονται, γίνονται στέρεες κατασκευές που άντε να τις κατεδαφίσεις και να τις αλλάξεις.
Η μάνα της Αντάρας, η Τάρα, χάνει τη μνήμη της. Η Αντάρα όμως όχι. Θυμάται ένα παρελθόν με μια μητέρα αδιάφορη που εγκατέλειψε τον γάμο της και την πήρε να ζήσουν σε ένα άσραμ (κομμάτι που μου φάνηκε αδιάφορο, αλλά καταλαβαίνω τη χρησιμότητά του) δημιουργώντας της πληγές και τρύπες που κουβαλάει ακόμα. Προσπαθεί να την κάνει να θυμηθεί, να τη βοηθήσει, να τη φροντίσει, κρατώντας ακόμα τον θυμό για όσα έχουν γίνει. Ή όσα εκείνη θυμάται να έχουν γίνει. Στην πραγματικότητα όμως το βιβλίο αυτό είναι για τη σχέση μιας μητέρας με την κόρη της. Αγάπη, ζήλια, προδοσία, μυστικά, θυμός, μια σχέση πολύπλοκη και μπερδεμένη μεταξύ δύο γυναικών με ίδια αντανάκλαση. Και για το πόσο διατεθειμένοι είμαστε να αφήσουμε χώρο δίπλα στη δική μας αλήθεια για την αλήθεια των άλλων.
Η Αντάρα προσφέρει στη μητέρα της ζάχαρη, κάτι γλυκό που προκαλεί ευφορία, παρουσιάζοντας τον εαυτό της σαν την καλή κόρη που κακομαθαίνει τη μητέρα της. Μόνο εκείνη γνωρίζει όμως ότι συγχρόνως την βυθίζει στη θολούρα, την αφοπλίζει, την κάνει αδύναμη να της προκαλέσει άλλο κακό και να ταράξει τη στέρεη αλήθεια της. Την αγαπά, μα εύχεται να πεθάνει και να επιστρέψει σαν σκυλί που θα την ακολουθεί παντού.
Κάναμε όλες τις εξετάσεις, δεν βρέθηκε ο λόγος που εκείνη τη μέρα ξύπνησε και δεν θυμόταν κανέναν. Θυμήθηκε όμως ε μ έ ν α. Και μου έκανε φοβερή εντύπωση, γιατί δεν ήμουν ποτέ η αγαπημένη της. Ή έτσι νομίζω. Γιατί έτσι θυμάμαι. Οι αναμνήσεις που έχω έφτιαξαν αυτή την πεποίθηση. Οι δικές της όμως ίσως είναι διαφορετικές.
Το θέμα με το παρελθόν είναι ότι ο καθένας έχει το δικό του, ακόμα κι αν το μοιράζεται με άλλους. Υπάρχουν τα γεγονότα, όμως ο καθένας τα βιώνει διαφορετικά και τα μεταφέρει στον χρόνο περνώντας τα από ένα σωρό προσωπικά φίλτρα, διαμορφώνοντας πεποιθήσεις που κρυσταλλώνονται, γίνονται στέρεες κατασκευές που άντε να τις κατεδαφίσεις και να τις αλλάξεις.
Η μάνα της Αντάρας, η Τάρα, χάνει τη μνήμη της. Η Αντάρα όμως όχι. Θυμάται ένα παρελθόν με μια μητέρα αδιάφορη που εγκατέλειψε τον γάμο της και την πήρε να ζήσουν σε ένα άσραμ (κομμάτι που μου φάνηκε αδιάφορο, αλλά καταλαβαίνω τη χρησιμότητά του) δημιουργώντας της πληγές και τρύπες που κουβαλάει ακόμα. Προσπαθεί να την κάνει να θυμηθεί, να τη βοηθήσει, να τη φροντίσει, κρατώντας ακόμα τον θυμό για όσα έχουν γίνει. Ή όσα εκείνη θυμάται να έχουν γίνει. Στην πραγματικότητα όμως το βιβλίο αυτό είναι για τη σχέση μιας μητέρας με την κόρη της. Αγάπη, ζήλια, προδοσία, μυστικά, θυμός, μια σχέση πολύπλοκη και μπερδεμένη μεταξύ δύο γυναικών με ίδια αντανάκλαση. Και για το πόσο διατεθειμένοι είμαστε να αφήσουμε χώρο δίπλα στη δική μας αλήθεια για την αλήθεια των άλλων.
Η Αντάρα προσφέρει στη μητέρα της ζάχαρη, κάτι γλυκό που προκαλεί ευφορία, παρουσιάζοντας τον εαυτό της σαν την καλή κόρη που κακομαθαίνει τη μητέρα της. Μόνο εκείνη γνωρίζει όμως ότι συγχρόνως την βυθίζει στη θολούρα, την αφοπλίζει, την κάνει αδύναμη να της προκαλέσει άλλο κακό και να ταράξει τη στέρεη αλήθεια της. Την αγαπά, μα εύχεται να πεθάνει και να επιστρέψει σαν σκυλί που θα την ακολουθεί παντού.
Κάναμε όλες τις εξετάσεις, δεν βρέθηκε ο λόγος που εκείνη τη μέρα ξύπνησε και δεν θυμόταν κανέναν. Θυμήθηκε όμως ε μ έ ν α. Και μου έκανε φοβερή εντύπωση, γιατί δεν ήμουν ποτέ η αγαπημένη της. Ή έτσι νομίζω. Γιατί έτσι θυμάμαι. Οι αναμνήσεις που έχω έφτιαξαν αυτή την πεποίθηση. Οι δικές της όμως ίσως είναι διαφορετικές.
August 14, 2020
This is the kind of book that would be a dream to analyze in a classroom setting. It's a deceptively simple premise, but there is so much to unpack here. Don't be fooled by its 229 page length. This ain't a breezy read.
March 31, 2021
I wonder, did she ever see me as a child she wanted to protect? And when did I become a competitor or, rather, an enemy?
My, this is a discomfiting book which tackles head on the difficult, complex, anxiety-ridden and sometimes downright neurotic relationship between a mother and daughter.
There's so much cultural fetishisation about motherhood but in real life that tangle of need, resistance, separation; of similarity and a kind of paranoid desire for difference; of love and frustration, is one which is so central and yet so contested and difficult for many women.
Doshi is absolutely ruthless in excavating this fraught bond and has her narrator speak things that are near to unsayable: 'I had the distinct feeling that she was pleased to tell me these things, to know that I would suffer as she had - and her consolation came from seeing that the hurt would continue and I would not be spared.'
The prose is pellucid in its clarity and makes the troubled emotions it delineates all the more tangible and unavoidable. I don't think I've read anything that is so unblinking and unflinching in the way it uncovers how toxicity and love can co-exist between a mother and daughter - difficult, hard-hitting, and emotive.
April 19, 2021
Longlisted for 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar, shortlisted for 2020 Booker Prize, has a distinctively bitter bite that my readerly palate has enjoyed. An unsettling, humorous and horrifying account of a mother-daughter relationship that binds them in a toxic love-hate codependency.
The book starts with a killer first sentence that very much establishes the first-person voice of the daughter, Antara: "I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure". What wonderfully delicious and dark wit. We quickly learn that the mother (Ma) is suffering cognitive degeneration and rapid memory loss. We get the following a few pages in: "Sometimes , I refer to Ma in the past tense even though she is still alive. This would hurt her if she could remember it long enough.... Sometimes I cry when no one else is around - I am grieving, but it's too early to burn the body". This really pulled me in. There is a quality of almost vicious, pained intelligence from the narrator as she peels back the layers of this relationship revealing what's led to this. At one point, further on in the book Antara reflects:
"There was a breakdown somewhere about what we were to one another, as though one of us were not holding up her part of the bargain, her side of the bridge. Maybe the problem is that we are standing on the same side, looking out into the emptiness. Maybe we were hungry for the same things, the sum of us only doubled that feeling. And maybe this is it, the hole in the heart of it, a deformity from which we can never recover.
If our conversations were itineraries, they would show us always returning to this vacant cul-de-sac, one we cannot escape from."
As the mother loses her memory we rely on Antara's account of this painful relationship and there are questions raised about the reliability of her memories. Antara herself is very much aware of this, almost as a tragic self-realisation that her childhood has locked her into a particular even peculiar, constrained way of interacting with the world. This is also expressed in her artistic practice of drawing.
The book also has a strangely claustrophobic feel, a sense that the reader is trapped with Antara inside the "cul-de-sac" of stories she keeps telling herself (and us) about this childhood she has lived and its suffocating impacts on her current life, including her marriage to Dilip.
I will update this review soon, with some further thoughts as Burnt Sugar isn't without a few flaws.
Fascinating book with such a distinctive voice that is both loving and cruel. Definitely worthy I think of its shortlisting for the Booker.
Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar, shortlisted for 2020 Booker Prize, has a distinctively bitter bite that my readerly palate has enjoyed. An unsettling, humorous and horrifying account of a mother-daughter relationship that binds them in a toxic love-hate codependency.
The book starts with a killer first sentence that very much establishes the first-person voice of the daughter, Antara: "I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure". What wonderfully delicious and dark wit. We quickly learn that the mother (Ma) is suffering cognitive degeneration and rapid memory loss. We get the following a few pages in: "Sometimes , I refer to Ma in the past tense even though she is still alive. This would hurt her if she could remember it long enough.... Sometimes I cry when no one else is around - I am grieving, but it's too early to burn the body". This really pulled me in. There is a quality of almost vicious, pained intelligence from the narrator as she peels back the layers of this relationship revealing what's led to this. At one point, further on in the book Antara reflects:
"There was a breakdown somewhere about what we were to one another, as though one of us were not holding up her part of the bargain, her side of the bridge. Maybe the problem is that we are standing on the same side, looking out into the emptiness. Maybe we were hungry for the same things, the sum of us only doubled that feeling. And maybe this is it, the hole in the heart of it, a deformity from which we can never recover.
If our conversations were itineraries, they would show us always returning to this vacant cul-de-sac, one we cannot escape from."
As the mother loses her memory we rely on Antara's account of this painful relationship and there are questions raised about the reliability of her memories. Antara herself is very much aware of this, almost as a tragic self-realisation that her childhood has locked her into a particular even peculiar, constrained way of interacting with the world. This is also expressed in her artistic practice of drawing.
The book also has a strangely claustrophobic feel, a sense that the reader is trapped with Antara inside the "cul-de-sac" of stories she keeps telling herself (and us) about this childhood she has lived and its suffocating impacts on her current life, including her marriage to Dilip.
I will update this review soon, with some further thoughts as Burnt Sugar isn't without a few flaws.
Fascinating book with such a distinctive voice that is both loving and cruel. Definitely worthy I think of its shortlisting for the Booker.
November 14, 2020
I am grateful to the publisher for granting me access to this book early since it doesn't come out in the USA until January but was on the Booker Prize shortlist. I very much wanted to read it since it has to do with an ashram, a mother-daughter relationship, and as one Instagram friend called him, a "Mr. Big" character.
Well this book was excruciating. A mother who raised her child poorly, inflicting endless bodily trauma on her through neglect while she pursued a guru in an ashram is now old and forgetful and that same daughter is faced with having to care for her. I found the details almost too much as a reader. For me there is far too much bodily horror between incredible digestive issues relayed to trauma, to regular old weight gain and not being beautiful and being viewed with disgust, to other forms of abuse I don't even want to get into. The writing also went in circles and I swear some of the story lines were left incomplete. Definitely not my pick to win the prize- I'm still rooting for Brandon Taylor and Maaza Mengiste.
Well this book was excruciating. A mother who raised her child poorly, inflicting endless bodily trauma on her through neglect while she pursued a guru in an ashram is now old and forgetful and that same daughter is faced with having to care for her. I found the details almost too much as a reader. For me there is far too much bodily horror between incredible digestive issues relayed to trauma, to regular old weight gain and not being beautiful and being viewed with disgust, to other forms of abuse I don't even want to get into. The writing also went in circles and I swear some of the story lines were left incomplete. Definitely not my pick to win the prize- I'm still rooting for Brandon Taylor and Maaza Mengiste.
March 18, 2021
I’m always game for a mother-daughter story, and even though I’m fortunate to have a close relationship with my mom, I’m drawn to stories that reveal the complexities in that special bond.
Burnt Sugar, nominated for the Booker Prize is about Tara and her daughter, Antara, living in India. Tara is losing her memory, and Antara has been through trauma and neglect throughout her childhood. The story is dark, intense, and raw, as these two navigate coming together even as the rifts of the past drive them apart.
At times I was super uncomfortable while reading, and I felt a sharp want for something better, for healing and hope, for the characters in their lives. Even if it wasn’t an easy read because if its darkness, I was invested and along for the ride.
I received a gifted copy.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
Burnt Sugar, nominated for the Booker Prize is about Tara and her daughter, Antara, living in India. Tara is losing her memory, and Antara has been through trauma and neglect throughout her childhood. The story is dark, intense, and raw, as these two navigate coming together even as the rifts of the past drive them apart.
At times I was super uncomfortable while reading, and I felt a sharp want for something better, for healing and hope, for the characters in their lives. Even if it wasn’t an easy read because if its darkness, I was invested and along for the ride.
I received a gifted copy.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
April 10, 2023
Ciężka i niewygodna lektura o macierzyństwie i relacji matka-córka. Rozkręca się niespiesznie i brakuje większego rozpędu, bo wszystkie największe dramaty rozgrywają się wewnętrznie. Nie dziwię się mieszanym opiniom, bo łatwo jest się odbić od tej książki, ale we mnie wbijała się powoli jak drzazga.
November 12, 2021
Η ιστορία μας ξεκινά με την Τάρα που χάνει τη μνήμη της και την κόρη της Αντάρα, που θέλει να τη βοηθήσει και να της συμπαρασταθεί. Οι δυο τους βέβαια, δεν είχαν ποτέ την κλασσική σχέση μητέρας - κόρης.
Μια μητέρα που κάνει την επανάσταση της, αφήνοντας την κόρη της σε χέρια τρίτων και μια κόρη, που δεν ένιωσε ποτέ την αγάπη και τη στοργή που κάθε μητέρα προσφέρει.
Αυτά τα κατάλοιπα τη βαραίνουν και στη μετέπειτα ζωή της, στις επιλογές που κάνει άλλες φορές ασυνείδητα και άλλες εντελώς συνειδητά.
Η συγγραφέας κινείται σε δύο διαφορετικές περιόδους σε παρόν και παρελθόν και μέσω των αναμνήσεων τις Αντάρα, μαθαίνουμε λεπτομέρειες για τη μητέρα της, μα και για εκείνη και τις επιλογές της.
Ανταποκρίνονται όμως οι αναμνήσεις της στην πραγματικότητα? Μήπως κάθε μια από τις δύο γυναίκες, θυμούνται τα πράγματα διαφορετικά?
Ποιανής η ανάμνηση είναι αληθινή?
Θα μπορέσει ποτέ η κόρη να καταλάβει τις αποφάσεις της μητέρας της?
Μήπως όμως ενδόμυχα κι εκείνη προσπαθεί να ζήσει κάποιες καταστάσεις προσπαθώντας να μπεί στη θέση της μητέρας της?
Η ιστορία αναφέρεται σε μια εντελώς διαφορετική κουλτούρα από τη δική μας, τα ερωτήματα όμως που θέτει είναι οικουμενικά θα έλεγα.
Μπορεί άραγε η μνήμη να καθορίσει το μέλλον και τις αποφάσεις ενός ανθρώπου?
Είναι άραγε υποκειμενικές οι αναμνήσεις μας?
Η συγγραφέας, δεν γράφει ένα βιβλίο για την μνήμη μόνο.
Μέσω των δύο αυτών γυναικών, μας βάζει στη διαδικασία να αναλογιστούμε, πόσο καλά γνωρίζουμε τη μητέρα μας?
Κι αντιστρόφως, πόσο καλά μας γνωρίζει η μητέρα μας?
3,5 αστέρια
February 20, 2022
Very reflexive and thoughtful, that's the least you can say about Avi Doshi's narration. She has 36-year-old Antara in the Indian city of Pune describe her struggle with her mother who’s afflicted with dementia. The mother was responsible for the very difficult childhood of Antara. In continuous jumps back and forth through time, Antara describes her own feelings, thoughts and expectations on this problematic mother-daughter relation, as well as her own marital problems and postnatal depression after the birth of her own daughter. Doshi shows that she digs deeper than the superficial. Her sometimes rather chaotic collection of loose descriptions and observations can be quite demanding for the reader, but I think she pulls it of. The reflexive style, the focus on psychological issues and on Antara's functioning as an artist inevitably reminded me of Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved. A promising debut, deservedly on the 2020 Booker Shortlist.
September 30, 2020
1.5. I'm not a fan of diaspora writers who've barely lived in India writing about it and talking about events like the bombay riots when it isn't even relevant to the story. Everything about this seemed so forced like this novel was trying to be complex by adding in outrageous (and mostly sexual) lines in the middle of describing something mundane or the way everything was described in such grotesque way like yes India is dirty and everything is covered in dust and there's stray dogs everywhere we get it!!!
Also the mother-daughter relationship which was supposed to be the main plot was never developed on. Antara describes how her mother neglected her but never let's us know how she feels about that it's just page after page of recounting everything her mother has done and the people she's slept with and describing her body in a frankly disgusting detail. Wish Avni Doshi sticks to writing abt new jersey in the future bc this was so so annoying.
Also the mother-daughter relationship which was supposed to be the main plot was never developed on. Antara describes how her mother neglected her but never let's us know how she feels about that it's just page after page of recounting everything her mother has done and the people she's slept with and describing her body in a frankly disgusting detail. Wish Avni Doshi sticks to writing abt new jersey in the future bc this was so so annoying.
August 20, 2020
The elevator pitch for this one might be Goodbye, Vitamin meets the cast of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness while Sleeping on Jupiter.
On the positive side, Doshi does a good job of creating a strong sense of place. The sights, smells, tastes, and climate of urban India are powerfully rendered. Her characterizations are, for the most part, varied and complex. And the quality of the writing - grammatically, at least - is certainly better than average.
What the book lacks is a clear focus. Just what are we supposed to be learning from this tale of the fractious relationship between a mother with early-onset Alzheimer's Dementia and her emotionally damaged, frustrated daughter? That mothering can be hard and thankless and not everyone is cut out for it? That there is no recovering from the harm caused by childhood abandonment? That we can never escape our families of origin? I honestly couldn't say. All I know is that these subjects could have been handled much better, and it would have helped if I had cared about either Tara or Antara. I did not.
There are passages which underscore a stunning lack of internal narrative validity. My favorite was, "The people I live with don't think about diet..." This, sixteen pages from the end, in a novel where each of the three adults sharing the apartment with Antara have been nothing short of political about diet and food choices. Burnt Sugar is a story in which characters obsess about such things and often try to control themselves and others through the foods they prepare, crave, avoid, recommend, withhold, or devour.
Added to this is the inclusion of lots of bad science. Lots. For the record:
Scabies cannot be transmitted from a mangy dog to a child.
Antibiotics treat bacterial infections, not fungal ones. In fact they often lead to secondary fungal disease.
Sciatic nerve pain travels from the lower back down one or both legs and not in the reverse direction.
A cell in a hypotonic solution will swell and perhaps even burst, not have contents "pulled from" it.
There's plenty more but you get the point. It is hard to accept the "reputation for brilliance" with which Doshi credits her editor, Hermione Thompson.
In the end I was lukewarm about this book. It should fit comfortably in the middle of this year's Booker longlist ranking, and just as snuggly on the public library shelf after it's been donated.
On the positive side, Doshi does a good job of creating a strong sense of place. The sights, smells, tastes, and climate of urban India are powerfully rendered. Her characterizations are, for the most part, varied and complex. And the quality of the writing - grammatically, at least - is certainly better than average.
What the book lacks is a clear focus. Just what are we supposed to be learning from this tale of the fractious relationship between a mother with early-onset Alzheimer's Dementia and her emotionally damaged, frustrated daughter? That mothering can be hard and thankless and not everyone is cut out for it? That there is no recovering from the harm caused by childhood abandonment? That we can never escape our families of origin? I honestly couldn't say. All I know is that these subjects could have been handled much better, and it would have helped if I had cared about either Tara or Antara. I did not.
There are passages which underscore a stunning lack of internal narrative validity. My favorite was, "The people I live with don't think about diet..." This, sixteen pages from the end, in a novel where each of the three adults sharing the apartment with Antara have been nothing short of political about diet and food choices. Burnt Sugar is a story in which characters obsess about such things and often try to control themselves and others through the foods they prepare, crave, avoid, recommend, withhold, or devour.
Added to this is the inclusion of lots of bad science. Lots. For the record:
Scabies cannot be transmitted from a mangy dog to a child.
Antibiotics treat bacterial infections, not fungal ones. In fact they often lead to secondary fungal disease.
Sciatic nerve pain travels from the lower back down one or both legs and not in the reverse direction.
A cell in a hypotonic solution will swell and perhaps even burst, not have contents "pulled from" it.
There's plenty more but you get the point. It is hard to accept the "reputation for brilliance" with which Doshi credits her editor, Hermione Thompson.
In the end I was lukewarm about this book. It should fit comfortably in the middle of this year's Booker longlist ranking, and just as snuggly on the public library shelf after it's been donated.
September 8, 2020
The amount of themes and metaphors for such a short book is verging on absurd but Doshi pulled it off. Scary to think it’s her first novel.
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