{"id":226,"date":"2020-11-12T13:18:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T13:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=226"},"modified":"2020-11-12T13:18:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T13:18:23","slug":"burnt-sugar-by-avni-doshi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2020\/11\/12\/burnt-sugar-by-avni-doshi\/","title":{"rendered":"“Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Burnt Sugar<\/em> is Avni Doshi\u2019s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. Set in Pune, India it is narrated by an artist named Antara who is struggling to come to terms with her past as she tries to work out how to care for her mother, who is living with early onset Dementia. This is a painfully honest look at caring for a close family member who isn\u2019t particularly likeable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would be lying if I said my mother\u2019s misery has never given me pleasure.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tara has not been a particularly caring mother. Abandoning her loveless marriage, she brought young Tara up in a strange and sometimes frightening ashram, then briefly chose homelessness for the two of them just to spite her affluent parents. Antara has been dragged along on this crazy adventure, for the most part, reluctantly. Now, a fully grown adult and about to become a mother herself, Antara is thinking about her past and some of the bad decisions her mother has made. Unfortunately, Tara doesn\u2019t remember their shared past in the same way. Both women feel the other is culpable for the mess they\u2019ve made of their relationship. But with Tara\u2019s increasing confusion, it\u2019s almost impossible to know who\u2019s telling the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems to me now that this forgetting is convenient, that she doesn\u2019t want to remember the things she has said and done. It feels unfair that she can put away the past from her mind while I\u2019m brimming with it all the time.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antara resents the way her mother has brought her up and yet feels compelled to care for her as the Dementia renders her increasingly reliant on others. Tara doesn\u2019t make the process of reconciliation easy. She constantly contradicts her daughter\u2019s take on events and eventually sets fire to her studio, destroying all her artwork. Antara interprets this act as an attempt to erase her identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel wrestles with complex questions about matriarchal relationships: these women can\u2019t seem to exist without the other, yet also appear to be hell bent on destroying each other. Their narratives are in conflict, yet they also seem to have shaped each other\u2019s stories and their own particular ideas of truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes I think I am becoming my mother.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReality is something that is co-authored.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burnt Sugar<\/em> also explores the role of women within Indian culture, interrogating class and gender assumptions and how both have evolved over the span of Tara\u2019s lifetime yet still have a long way to go. The novel is rich in cultural description and paints a powerful picture of how Dementia is viewed within a non-Western culture. I particularly enjoyed the scenes describing everyday domestic life and the culture which exists around food. It\u2019s refreshing to read a depiction of someone living with Dementia who isn\u2019t an elderly, white, middle-class woman. I\u2019d like to read more narratives like this. I thoroughly enjoyed Burnt Sugar<\/em> and found the character of Tara both intriguing and extremely frustrating. I can understand Antara\u2019s reluctance to become her mother\u2019s fulltime carer. A trying person who develops Dementia is usually just as trying as before their diagnosis, oftentimes more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burnt Sugar was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2020<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burnt Sugar is Avni Doshi\u2019s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. Set in Pune, India it is narrated by an artist named Antara who is struggling to come to terms with her past as she tries to work out how to care for her mother, who is living with early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,24,6,31,12,14],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-early-onset","tag-family","tag-indian","tag-novel","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}