An interesting but difficult and dense read. This novel takes you on a journey through the psychology of Antara- and what a journey it is. She and her mother have both had multiple incidents that could cause trauma based mental health problems in their lives, and this explores that in a sparky, interesting but also damaged narrative.

An interesting look at the idea of having a difficult relationship with a parent who no longer remembers the harm they have inflicted upon you. It is thought-provoking and raw but the more needlessly grotesque elements meant that it was far from my favourite book of the year. However, its nods to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh did somewhat please the true crime aficionado in me.

A powerful memorable read. It's been wonderful to see the success and attention that this book has received. Really looking forward to whatever Avni Doshi writes next!

A fantastic look at the complication of family, especially the particular fraughtness that comes with mother-daughter relationships.

I have a Twitter thread about the book and I anticipate I'll re-read it soon, especially in light of its addition to the Women's Prize longlist.

Wow. This book is captivating in that it is unflinchingly honest. The narrator is us and sometimes that narrator is unlikeable - that is not always easy to read.

I found the novel initially interesting but ultimately not compelling enough to finish, after two attempts. I would however be interested in looking at future titles from this author. Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a masterpiece and unbelivably good for being a first novel. One of the best books in 2020.

I talk about it in this video on my Booktube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbieb3sSJU

Thanks for getting the copy.

A strong-headed and often selfish mother and divorcee—Tara—slowly being bogged down in dementia; a visual artist and former's daughter—Antara—who worries about her career, her marriage, and the tension-filled strings weaved in the relationship with her mother who is gradually losing her memory; a narration spilled through dual timelines—one painting the current events against the backdrop of a modern Indian city, and the other recounting years marking Antara's childhood.

Like sugar that's caramelizing, this shortlisted title for Booker Prize 2020 is dangerously scalding while it entangles a mother-daughter relationship in unmet expectations, lost dreams, unhappiness, and years of neglecting sensitivity, love, and passion that every fulfilling relationship demands. And like caramelized sugar searing on the flames, Burnt Sugar can scorch with painful evocativeness around abuse, loneliness, and post-partum depression wrapped in the flawed characterization of a woman.

Despite the very many invigorating and individualistic themes with potential to manifest empathy, understanding, and relatability, and equally important depictions of timely tensions like classism and religious strain, this debut fails to let a reader indulge in the absolutely realistic mess due to the lack of a compelling voice, an excessively floundering narration, and unnecessarily cliched portrayal of disturbing instances, nauseating descriptions, and the typically gross, pathetic, and filthy rendering of India—not to say there aren't issues in the country or stray dogs or pervert gurus, but the way Burnt Sugar paints the picture of this third-world country is wildly acclimatizing to the western audience and so-called intellectuals with awards to give.

Artist Antara has just been married when her mother Tara shows first signs of Alzheimer’s disease. With her mother losing her memory gradually, the daughter starts to remember what they both went through. The time when her father still lived with them, then, the time at an ashram where kids where more or less left to themselves while Tara was deeply in love with a guru, her time at a Christian, yet not so very philanthropic and humane, boarding school. As an adult, Antara learns that there are rules she is not aware of but which are highly important to others e.g. for her mother-in-law and which she better adhered to.

"I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure."

Avni Doshi’s debut novel has been shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, the first draft was written during a stay India and won the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize, all in all, it took her seven years to complete the book. The relationship between mother and daughter always remains the main focus of Antara’s thinking and her art since she is under a constant emotional pressure. Even though it is highly toxic, she cannot – of course – get rid of it.

The author’s observation and especially the way she describes the mother’s gradual memory loss are particularly striking. The contrast between tradition and a modern way of life, obviously present everywhere in India, is also powerfully depicted.

Having heard so much praise of the novel I really was looking forward to read it, yet, I struggled with the negativity. The relationship between mother and daughter, the mother’s neglect of her small child, the injustice Antara experiences again and again – it is not easy to endure. Maybe it just wasn’t the best time to read it – 2020 has offered by far enough negative news and after months of pandemic, who doesn’t slowly become depressed?

Burnt Sugar is one of my favourite books of the year and I find myself lost over Avni Doshi’s beautiful, gloomy prose over and over again. Doshi writes about dementia so accurately and reproachfully —it is not making amends with the demented but making amends with the fact that you will never get what you wish for. In an interview with Five Dials, Doshi says:

‘We have an expectation that loss comes all at once. You lose the person physically, mentally. There’s a void when a person has gone. My experience with dementia is that because the mind is going piece by piece, you’re left with this body that looks perfectly healthy. It’s able to do all the things it always did. The person looks the same except they’re not there and there’s something almost uncanny about the experience because you feel you’re in front of a wax figure: beautifully preserved, smiling, almost eternal, but vacant. In a sense, it’s a death without the lost of the body.’

Burnt Sugar is most likely to be a controversial read, especially if you are an Indian woman. You will either love it or hate it.

Doshi narrates the story of a mother and daughter, Tara and Antara, through the lense of what identity, freedom and motherhood can mean to two different women from two different generations. The energy between the pair is nerve wracking. They cut each other down with hurtful words without regret but at the same time, there is also an incredible sense of duty and matrilineal affiliation as Antara realises her mother is losing her memory.

As the reader, I loved all the micro aggression and tensions because it’s not everyday you come across an Indian book where mothers and daughters call each other names, sleep with the same man and turn others on each other. You have to give kudos to Doshi for freeing these women up to be their true selves which in this case happens to be freedom seeking and egotistical over maternal and domesticated.

One of the big plus points of this book is Doshi’s use of language. She has a way with English which is incredibly exciting because it feels so powerful and angry, a huge contrast to the more mellow constructions that have emerged from the country.

What I was a little less satisfied was with the author sometimes being too obvious. Did she literally have to call the daughter, Antara to undo what Tara stands for? Similarly, towards the end the mother holding on to her son-in-law in a possessive manner to reinstate her power to seduce and control, feels titilating but then you realise we are falling back on the trope of the seductive woman and that woman can be your mother for a bit of a shock value.

I will end with the recurrent motif of forgetting Antara- in the ashram and in old age because by doing so the mother refuses to let the child take over her complete objective reality. She refuses to be defined by the joys of motherhood and that’s a bold position to take in contemporary India. I really, really enjoyed this counter narrative.

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Beautiful, brutal and bristling with emotion, this book is ready to break your heart time and time again. A real tale of the faults of the human condition, it really is a powerful read.

This searing novel about mother-daughter relationships, and growing up (even as an adult) is a messy, haphazard but powerful narrative about how our relationships define, and sometimes scar us.

Our narrator is a married adult woman, living in India, whose mother seems to be developing signs of dementia. Over the course of the novel we get an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative which ranges around the narrator, Antara's, relationship with her mother, her art, and her relationship with her husband. We often flash back to her childhood, seeing the course of events that have brought us to where we are now. Antara's mother is long divorced from her husband, who was absent from Antara's childhood, and during her daughter's youth lived in an 'ashram' and even at one point on the streets. Antara is bounced from place to place throughout her childhood, therefore it is no surprised that she feels unsettled, and fears abandonment even as an adult.

Antara isn't a likeable character - she can be highly frustrating, makes poor decisions and almost self sabotaging at many points. However, while we might not like her, she is interesting because we can relate to her on so many levels. She captures so much of the experience of being a woman, capturing complexities around her body, her relationship with food and eating, including what it means to take up space, her sexuality, her identity as a woman, artist, wife and daughter. We might not always agree with Antara but we can definitely recognise at least some, if not a lot of what she feels.

Doshi captures how relationships between mothers and daughters can be strained, painful, dysfunctional and even highly toxic. There are elements of this book which are incredibly difficult to read, but important to explore. Equally, the explorations around memories and forgetting, and the questioning of whether this is real without the medical symptoms present is fascinating. Doshi fits a lot in to this novel, and I'm sure you could reread this several times and find new layers and new meanings each time.

This book will likely be a bit of a marmite read - despite it's brilliance on many levels, it is not the most accessible of narratives. However, this makes it perfect for the Booker shortlist where it is sure to get the attention it deserves. Whether or not you like the style of this novel, there is no arguing with the fact that this is an incredible debut.

Confession Time:-
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Prior to The Booker Prize Long list 2020 announcement I had not heard of this book. Then like magic it started popping up everywhere on the old book gram to rave reviews.
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My review is going to be no different.
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This book is going to make you feel uncomfortable, uneasy in parts but I feel at times when a book can do that then you get that feeling that your in for a very interesting ride.
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It sets both the tone & atmosphere for what lies ahead and the relationship between Mother and daughter.
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The bond between mother and daughter is unbreakable or so they say. But here we have a relationship that appears to be beyond repair or help.
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Dementia is slowly robbing Tara of her life, personality both past and present. Yet for her daughter the past is ever present in her mind and will just not leave.
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Tara has no recollection that she was an uncaring mother. She believes that it isn’t true.
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I found this book interesting and as I have already said uncomfortable in places. As it takes on mental health and the subjects that surround it. Also the damage that can occur if you haven’t had the beat childhood and how you form as an adult.
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I can see how it was shortlisted as it is a good read.
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Didn’t love this, I just couldn’t find an element I was drawn too, complicated mother daughter dynamics are interesting, and I don’t need my characters likeable but I just couldn’t get involved, I am of the minority though and know many have enjoyed this quirky and twisted little story.

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.

Antara’s mother, Tara, has dementia; she wanders around at night, asks Antara to phone people who are dead, and eventually doesn’t recognise Antara at all. They have a complex, antagonist relationship. When Antara was small, her mother left her husband, Antara’s father, because she felt stifled in his parents’ home, and joined an ashram. Run by a guru who promoted free love and took some of the women as his lovers before casting them off, Antara was neglected by her mother, instead becoming close to a woman called Kali Mata. Now, Antara seems to want a conventional life; she’s married and has discussed the possibility of children with her husband. However, she works as an artist; her most recent project being one in which she copied the face of a man over and over again.

The damage Antara’s mother rendered has left Antara in a position where she both loves and hates her mother. She wants to take care of her as she deteriorates, while also wanting to hurt her. It’s deliberately unclear whether some of Antara’s actions are because she wants the thing she is pursuing or because she knows it will hurt her mother; perhaps that she’s her mother’s daughter makes any distinction impossible.

The epigraph to the book is a quotation from Lidia Yuknavitch’s superb memoir The Chronology of Water. Yuknavitch is one my favourite writers so I figured I was in for a treat as soon as I opened Burnt Sugar and I was right. Doshi’s depiction of Tara and Antara’s relationship shows how complex, interdependent and toxic the mother/daughter dynamic can be. There are few good portrayals of this type of motherhood in literature; it’s refreshing to see another excellent one.

All reading is subjective and some readers may report entirely different experiences from mine, but I enjoyed this book.
If you put into the mix that it is a debut novel, albeit one worked on over the course of eight years, you can only be understanding of certain shortcomings, for instance some similitudes which really jarred with the general accomplished style.

Though the theme of parental neglect is very far from my experience, I found the characters very relatable. I also found the author's ability to give you a sense of place really very good and of a 360 degrees scope, through all senses. I really enjoyed the frequent sensorial exploration of the environment, particularly in the culinary realm, which really helped me immerse myself into the story.

"It is a struggle to remain present wherever I am, because my mind travels in time and space, not just to past and future but also to the homes that surround us in this compound, to the bodies that inhabit this city."

Many thanks to Hamish Hamilton and NetGalley for sending me a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The narrator is an unreliable one, but her memories are nonetheless her memories and some of them really stayed with me, particularly what she reports as her first memory in the ashram. I thought the conflicted relationship with her mother was well developed and both characters were interesting. Based on interviews with the writer it would seem that the genesis for the book was a reflection on the particular cusp which a lot of women find themselves, between having being a daughter (more or less well cared for) and a mother (more or less well caring) and soon possibly to become a carer for the mother who cared for us - again with varying degrees of competence.
This theme is given added depth by the particularities of the narrative and the offshoot themes which are not as explored, but if you like are another elaboration of the conflictual mother-daughter relationship placed on a larger scale, such as Indian society vs. Non-Resident Indian (NRI) society and East vs. West (the ashram and the Westerners flocking to it).

"He said this is something that will always separate us - Americans don't behave in certain ways. I asked him not to idealize the polite veneer of his childhood because everyone knows what Americans are really capable of."

This book isn’t a big and loud story it’s a quiet story about the tumultuous relationship between a mother-daughter, and our main character Antara who has to look after her mother after finding about her dementia diagnoses. Antara has never felt loved since she was a child so having to love her mother is a hard task for her as their relationship just wasn’t happy at all. And we see that through the flashbacks we get from when Antara was really young.

It’s a very dark book but it’s one I think a lot of people really enjoy.

No surprise this is on the booker list, it’s a rare one whereby you are reading and you are swept along with the story not knowing where you would end up.
Along the roads of India and into various parts of the main characters life. She try’s to understand her mother’s illness and make everyone else believe it.
A very deep story fully of questions, descriptive passages and lots of love.

Such an interesting book! I really enjoyed this, picked it up on recommendation of the Booker prize reviewers and I wasn't disappointed. The writing is incredible, it really makes you think. I'd definitely recommend this if you're looking for a character-focused story that's brilliantly written and will give you allllll the feels. Amazing work, all the stars from me!