Review: Burnt Sugar

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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.

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