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Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi    {Reviewed by STELLA} With the quotation, “Does the wound of daughter turn into something else if left unattended?” from Linda Yuknavitch opening this novel, you are, from the start of this Booker finalist, set on a course. Burnt Sugar is a sharp-edged portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship that has love, revenge and confusion at its core. Antara, the daughter, is in the throes of her mother’s madness. A madness that has invaded her life from the outset, in one sense or the other. A madness of selfishness and obsession leads Tara, as a young mother, to gather her baby, leave her husband, and follow the guru at the local ashram. Her sexual relationship with the guru leaves her young child to the whims of communal life and, fortunately, the hands of an older woman, Kali Mata. Antara’s memories of this time are fragmented and, at times, frightening, and these early years of abandonment mark her interactions with both her parents as well as making her wary of close relationships with others. When Tara does leave the ashram, her relationship with the guru in tatters, it does nothing to heal the wound for Antara — the daughter is never good enough — a burden who is endured rather than loved, and later a competitor for attention as Tara ages. While Doshi does not overstate the interactions of Antara with her husband, friends and, later, her own baby, it is clear by her behaviour that she has difficulty finding emotional security in her everyday life. Antara is an artist and her artworks focus on memory and obsession. She has a daily project — drawing and redrawing the same face each day — the small changes recorded over time reflect the way in which actions are rewritten incrementally. This project in itself reveals the complex relationship between mother and daughter — one of misguided love and obsession. While it is easy to see this novel as a story of a poisonous mother, this would do Avni Doshi’s novel an injustice. Yes, Antara at times sees her mother’s dementia as a penance for her bad behaviour and for her failure as a parent, and Tara does still inflict destruction in her present incarnation — habitually as much as anything, but there is also an empathy here for her mother’s state, if not forgiveness, especially as she deals with her own sense of entrapment by marriage and motherhood. Doshi explores these themes, along with the expectations of women’s roles in contemporary India, with a honed eye and acid wit. Revenge comes in spoon-fed sugar mouthfuls, and love is elusive, yet hovering at the edges, for Antara. She is not your average heroine nor villain — a victim but also a perpetrator of deceit: Doshi’s portrayal of a young woman at odds with the world she lives in — middle-class India — and at odds with her mother — “I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure” — is searingly honest.