This was read for my Booker Prize Group -and the first 6 or so chapters were just perfect for me at the moment.  I was fine with the ramblings of the 1st person narrator, Antara.  She is a young Indian woman, married and living in Pune, India with her husband Dilip, and her mother Tara who is becoming feeble and losing her memory.  Some days she forgets who Antara is.  

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Burnt Sugar 
Avni Doshi 
2020
Read by Sneha Mathan 8h 35m
Rating:  8 / 21st century lit
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This was read for my Booker Prize Group – https://groups.io/g/bookerprize   and the first 6 or so chapters were just perfect for me at the moment.  I was fine with the ramblings of the 1st person narrator, Antara.  She is a 36-year old Indian woman, married and living in the modern city of Pune, India with her husband Dilip, and her mother Tara who is becoming feeble and losing her memory.  Some days she forgets who Antara is.

At first there are short references to and memories of prior times and as the first few chapters go by these references grow in length and detail. One day a closet door opens and the past reveals itself in a multitude of old saris and other clothes, many in that meaningful color, white.

But it’s not until Chapter 8, “My earliest memory concerns a giant,” that the tone changes and the story gets different. It feels rather abrupt, but it works. The reader is transported to Antara’s childhood with Tara, her wild, neglectful and generally irresponsible mother, the same mother she cares for now. IT seems that throughout her childhood Antara is left in various unhappy situations as is convenient for Tara.  This major transition from today to the past is about 25% into the book.
 
And then that’s the way it goes,  alternating the horrors and ugliness of the past with the uncertainties of the present.

https://fivedials.com/interviews/we-have-an-expectation-that-loss-comes-all-at-once-avni-doshi-burnt-sugar-interview/