Sugaring Off
by Fanny Britt, translated by Susan Ouriou
Book*hug Press, 2024
Review by Michelle Hardy
When French-Canadian celebrity chef Adam Dumont accidentally smashes his rental surfboard into the knee of local nineteen-year-old Celia Smith off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, the collision marks a watershed in the novel. Sugaring Off, published by Book*hug Press in October 2024, is Susan Ouriou’s French-to-English translation of Fanny Britt’s 2021 Governor General Award-winning novel Faire les sucres. This novel reveals how distinctions between privilege, race, status, wealth, and class become “blurred, deprived of their real contours” when submerged beneath waves of grief, pain, and anger. As Adam surfaces from the ocean post-impact, he sees something he’ll never forget: the unfathomable depth of Celia’s heterochromatic eyes. Celia’s vision reveals more than anguish from the monstrous bend of her newly shattered knee; her eyes see and reflect the future. Celia predicts: “This is how the end of the world comes about. On a surfboard, the fault borne on the shoulders of some stupid tourist.”
Divorced and self-distanced from his adult children, Adam is eight years older than his partner Marion Robert, an empathetic dentist. Marion’s empathy wears thin, however, as Adam grows increasingly despondent. Convinced he nearly died the day he demolished Celia’s knee, Adam begins to experience what he believes are “secondary drownings.” His doctor repeatedly reassures him one doesn’t drown from a mouthful of water, that Adam’s subsequent bouts of panic and frequent floods of tears are trauma-induced and nothing to be ashamed of, and that a prescription for an antidepressant might help him stay afloat. Shocked by Adam’s “weakness, selfishness, and lack of resilience,” Marion begins to think of her partner as a “poor lost little boy.” With this fresh insight, her contempt for Adam and rage toward others begins to grow.
Hints of violence ripple through the novel. Characters fantasize about slapping or pushing others. Adam mentally vows to punish Marion when her words of support needle his precarious state. Britt threads the risk of impending violence tight by creating a perpetual state of dread. For example, when Marion investigates a leak coming through her roof from the floor of her upstairs tenant, phrases like “tap-tapping; sticking the razor back under the hot water; call for help; and Death” set me, the reader, on edge. I expect doom to be disclosed by the end of this scene. Yet Britt’s narrator scolds midway through: “Didn’t it take an idiot — or at least someone intensely naive — to believe that it was enough to see no trace of violence for violence to be considered absent?” Am I seeing traces of violence or not? The narrator’s cheeky logic makes me feel as though I’ve been slapped. Strangely enough, I like it.
Unable to move beyond graphic memories of the day he nearly died, Adam copes by spending money. He drops $750,000 on a stand of maple trees in Quebec and hires the original owners, the Sweet family, to stay on and help him learn how to produce maple syrup. Adam hopes a sugar shack will enable him to act out his farm-to-table philosophy which might in turn help liquidate his despair.
Sugaring Off, Susan Ouriou’s choice for title translation, refers not only to the method of making maple syrup but also to the traditional party celebrating a successful harvest and production. Sugaring off is both an ancestral process and a crucial moment; it is a festive celebration symbolizing both. The phrase blends seasonal breadth with fleeting specificity.
In my opinion, the breaking point of this novel occurs after Adam’s first maple syrup season during his meticulously planned sugaring-off party. Since meeting the close-knit Sweet family, Adam has wanted desperately to be accepted into their fold. When the Sweets are unable to attend his party, Adam takes an invasive peek through the window of their home. He is a business acquaintance intruding on a private family moment. Upon this realization, Adam drops to the “cold, bare ground of sugaring-off season.” It is an emotional scene for characters and readers alike. And it is at this moment I turn my back on the protagonist, wanting nothing more to do with Adam Dumont.
It’s a bold move to create an unlikeable protagonist. But Britt’s characters are far from one-dimensional. I toss between waves of criticism and empathy for these richly complicated people. As the timeline shifts, the same episodes are presented from alternate points of view. Characters’ appearances and personalities differ when depicted by the narrator or seen through another character’s eyes. Every time I form an opinion, Britt encourages me to look again.
Branched sight lines form a recurring pattern in this novel. Adam repeatedly voices his anger at a power line crossing his property, bisecting his view. As well, a white bicycle perched in a tree both commemorates a tragic death and creates a talking point for whether visual reminders of trauma are worth the demoralization. Britt creates a parallel between American saltwater taffy production and Canadian maple syrup. Other subjects examined from two sides include language: English and French, as well as nationality: Canadian and American. Finally, intersecting storylines scrutinize reproduction and motherhood from multiple perspectives.
Despite the crossroads where characters’ lives intersect, the novel spends more time rendering Adam and Marion than Celia. On one hand, Britt gives Celia the first and last words in the novel. But one could also argue that Celia risks being crushed beneath the weight of Adam and Marion’s babble and grief.
Eventually, we arrive at another party; Marion’s birthday coincides with sugaring off. Everything looks perfect but also feels a bit vile. Marion sits wrapped in a childhood blanket and mollycoddles Adam. This sickly-sweet scene reminds me of the first time Adam explores his newly purchased maple stand and the scent of autumn grabs at his throat. He thinks, “strange, how much you can love the smell of rotting.” The decay of these characters’ lives is partly what I find compelling about this story. Britt provides a vantage point from which to see ourselves slipping under, oblivious to impending doom while we, like Adam, “suffer comfortably … faces averted from the window, palms over our ears, beyond reach and in the dark till the end of time.” That is until Celia appears with her vision of existential dread. Celia, who rejects Adam’s pity, silently asks: “What have you got to cry about, you moron? …I can give you a thousand other things you can feel guilty about, give me five minutes and I’ll grind you into powder, go on, just one tear trickling down your cheek and I’ll blow it all sky high.” Celia observes the tide rising in Adam, and her power of second sight is terrifying. Because I know if she glanced in my direction, she’d see the same in me.
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Michelle Hardy is a developmental editor and book reviewer. Michelle transitioned to a professional freelance editing career after retiring as a high school English teacher. She completed a master’s degree in English at the University of Regina in 2012 and obtained an editing certificate from Simon Fraser University in 2021. A member of Editors Canada and the Editorial Freelancers Association, Michelle lives in Victoria, British Columbia.