Book Review: Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi

 Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi 

Read: 26 - 29/08/2023

My rating: 4 /5 stars

Book of 2023: 10

This is a tale of obsession and betrayal. This is a poisoned love story. But not between lovers - between mother and daughter. 

Tara and Antara, the woman and her angry shadow. But which one is which?

Sharp as a blade and compulsively readable, Burnt Sugar slowly untangles the skein of memory and fiction that binds two women together, revealing the truth that lies beneath. 

Read this one on Alcúdia beach in Mallorca. Natalia bought it at my 24th birthday bookday, from Max Minerva’s bookshop in Henleaze. She had it in Mallorca with her and I had finished the books I brought with me and so, I read this one on our beach day. 

The writing in this novel is fantastic. I need to get my own copy and do a re-read so I can underline all the phrases I want to (I read Nat’s copy and didn’t want to deface it). 

It’s a little bit one of those not-sure-what’s-happening-at-all-times kinds of stories, but elegantly done. 

Burnt Sugar explores family, betrayal, neglect, over-dependence, reliance, hatred, love, marriage, manipulation, motherhood, madness, daughterhood, cruelty, partnership, misogyny. 

It’s brilliant. I was hooked. I didn’t want to put it down. 

I was so angry for the protagonist. At her childhood, her mother, her father, everyone who had ever put her in a situation of neglect or danger or feeling of abandonment or betrayal. 

You also aren’t fully required to like this protagonist. You empathise with her story, her treatment, but you aren’t completely compelled to be on her side. She has an edge of cruelty towards her mother, her friends, the people around her. You only really see some softness from her when she talks about her husband. Even when she has a baby, the protection she feels doesn’t seem to come from motherly love, it feels more like ownership, self-protection, something else. 

It’s a brilliantly written piece of fiction, multi-layered and complex. Highly recommend it. Definitely one I plan to re-read.