Sugaring Off by Fanny Britt, translated by Susan Ouriou

Fiction Review by Alison Manley

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Oct 20, 2024

When I started reading Sugaring Off by Fanny Britt, and read the very first section, a piece on a family with a long-running saltwater taffy business, a thing which isn’t completely specified till the end of that chapter, I was shocked, because I totally assumed this novel involved maple syrup, from the title. Fear not, my fellow readers, a sugar shack does enter the narrative and all is well. The saltwater taffy business versus the sugar shack as occupying similar niches but very different places in societal consciousness does come into play, though I don’t think Britt used it to its full effect.

“Sugaring Off is deftly translated by Ouriou, and asks several pointed questions about grief, family, and who gets to have space to mourn.”

In a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, Adam and Marion’s trip ends poorly when Adam crashes into a young woman while surfing. While her knee is bashed up, he inhales water and is otherwise fine physically, but shaken mentally. Adam and Marion return home to Quebec, unprepared for the turmoil this accident unleashes on both of them, and the shattering of what they thought was a happy life. Meanwhile, Celia, the latest generation in the saltwater taffy business, the girl whose knee is smashed up in the surfing accident, is left to heal, her own life changed. Much of the book is devoted to Adam and Marion, while Celia’s story is interspersed sparingly.

While I feel like the few pages given to Celia to express her story were a meta-commentary on the space we provide people of colour, and in particular Black women, to tell their stories – as in, no space at all – I felt somewhat frustrated because I think Celia could have had more page time and it still would have had impact, rather than the somewhat repetitive middle part of the novel where Adam and Marion are existing near one another but not interacting any longer. Celia’s side of the story is commentary on privilege, and infinitely more interesting than Adam and Marion, and while that all makes sense with the larger conversation the novel is trying to have, it was difficult in the middle of the story.

Sugaring Off is deftly translated by Ouriou, and asks several pointed questions about grief, family, and who gets to have space to mourn. I think it achieves its goals in demanding answers to these questions through Adam, Marion and Celia, but it would have been a richer experience had it been a bit longer, and a bit more given to Celia to stand in stark opposition with the lives of Adam and Marion.

About the Author

FANNY BRITT is a playwright, writer, and translator. She is the winner of multiple Governor General’s Literary Awards, a Libris Award, a Joe Shuster Award, and was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature. Faires les sucres won the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-language Fiction in 2021. Britt has written a dozen plays and translated more than fifteen works by many American, Canadian, British, and Irish playwrights. Born in Northern Quebec, Britt lives in Montreal.

SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning literary translator (French and Spanish to English) and fiction writer. She has been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation on seven occasions, winning for her translation of Pieces of Me by Charlotte Gingras. She also translated Catherine Leroux's The Future, winner of 2024 CBC Canada Reads. Ouriou is also the author of two novels, Damselfish, and the critically acclaimed Nathan, and the editor of two anthologies, the trilingual Beyond Words: Translating the World and the bilingual Languages of Our Land: Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec. She lives in Calgary.

About the Reviewer

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.