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

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

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

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

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

There’s some gorgeous writing in this book and a really interesting story. It just fell a little flat for me. I think for people with an echo of the relationship that is described throughout the book - the story would be very powerful. 

This book broke my brain. 
Despite being quite tough to read, there is a lot that I appreciated about this book.  The complicated mother/daughter relationship, mental health issues (depression, PPD vs psychosis, PTSD, physical manifestations of trauma, etc), the depiction of an India that is not seen often in books (through the eyes of the rich) while also keeping depictions through poor and middle class eyes, and the biggest thing to me: the effect trauma has on memories.  For being such a short book, I think Doshi addressed all these topics quite well and with very strong language. 
Nonetheless, this book just wasn't pleasant.  I found the depictions of bodily fluids and excreta to be too numerous and didn't provide much to the plot.  I also took away a whole star because of a scene in which Antara speaks on having sex with her dad, which was disgusting and added NOTHING to the plot.  I appreciate when authors explore the deep, dark, and vile thoughts of humans, but Doshi had too many and I felt like it diluted the effect.  Reza's character is introduced in the second half of the book and because he is a pivotal bridge between Tara and Antara, you would expect his part to be deeply discussed, however it was not, and it felt like a missed opportunity.  The scene where Antara confronts Tara about his role in her life was anti-climactic considering his role.  This book is also VERY dark with not enough light.  I think some lightness is necessary in such dark stories to keep it readable, and this book just didn't have enough, and I was glad it was as short as it was because I would've stopped reading if it was much longer. 
I was going to DNF this book about half way through and am glad I didn't, as the second half of the book was strong and provided a lot of explanation into the antics of Antara, but I think there was a lot of unnecessary descriptions and darkness that could have been done away with.   

I connected to this book as the daughter of a parent who dealt with a manipulative parent until their death. I think it helped me understand a little more what they might have gone through. About the book itself, I love an unreliable narrator and how frustrating the reading experience can be! Not an all-time favorite, but a solid read that I will think about for some time. As with most unreliable stories, I wished the ending had been formed more than where it ended. I don't think the story needed to continue, but just a little more closure would have been great!