Burnt Sugar

This was a tricky one to rate. I like the /way/ it was written. The style, the word choices. There are some passages I really, really enjoyed. But it also felt overwrought sometimes. Too long even though it’s already short. I think it’s ripe for Freudian analysis, though I don’t know Freud well enough to do it.

I gained nothing from reading this. It felt like a strange amalgamation of several other novels I’ve already read, impressions that others have already made, that led nowhere and said nothing. I can’t imagine what the Booker Prize panel saw in it. It lost a star mostly because I was lead to expect more.