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    Sugar
    Sugar
    Sugar
    Audiobook8 hours

    Sugar

    Written by Bernice L. McFadden

    Narrated by Myra Lucretia Taylor

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A novel by a critically acclaimed voice in contemporary fiction, praised by Ebony for its “unforgettable images, unique characters, and moving story that keeps the pages turning until the end.”

    A young prostitute comes to Bigelow, Arkansas, to start over, far from her haunting past. Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered fifteen years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women’s lives—and the life of an entire town.

    Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out—but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 24, 2017
    ISBN9781501963872
    Sugar
    Author

    Bernice L. McFadden

    Bernice L. McFadden is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious, and The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the BCALA.

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    Reviews for Sugar

    4.5/5

    227 ratings24 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 5/5
      Interesting. She grabs your attention from the first page and never releases it. Continues to be one of my favorite authors

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent excellent book! Absolutely recommend it. I couldn’t stop listening.
    • 5/5
      Wow! Just wow! There’s got to be a sequel, right? The story is well told with vivid language. Grabs your attention from the start.
    • 5/5
      So good! Now I can’t wait to read Bitter Earth
    • 5/5
      Sugar was a very emotional and entertaining book to listen to. The words both written and spoken were gripping. In the midst of humor and descriptive language was a tale of sadness. Without revealing the plot or storyline, Sugar is a tale of a woman's journey to survive. Through her memories, we see man's I inhumanity to man (and woman's). The author takes you on a rollercoaster of feelings that makes it hard to stop listening. It's just that compelling. And the climax made my head spin. Can't wait to hear the next book and find other books by the narrator. Loved it!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! The end had my sad wanting more!
    • 5/5
      Wow, what a journey!! This book takes you through the life of Sugar, her heartache and the triumph of self realization. Emotional and poignant.
    • 5/5
      Wow! This book was such a good audiobook! There was such an unexpected, powerful ending!
    • 5/5
      Excellent read the narrator was great. I'm ready for part 2
    • 3/5
      I couldn't get through it. The characters felt forced into place, to move the story forward and the writing was...folksy in the wrong way.
    • 4/5
      The past of the woman who moves in next to Pearl Taylor is plain to her friends, but Pearl sees something in Sugar that she needs. It's set up for tragedy and both hits and skips it by a thread, but the life that others can bring to - or take from - our lives is rich and textured.
    • 5/5
      Very good. Ties together a sepressed mother's murdered daughter and a young city girl who sells her body in a small town to survive.[read 2001-18 yr ago]
    • 4/5
      A powerful story told in such realistic terms I felt as though I was there. I want to read more books by this author, so that's a big thumbs up from me. The American south in the 1930s to 1950s was not a friendly place for African Americans. And within their own communities, further dangers infiltrated their everyday lives.

      This is the story of a societal outcast, a throwaway life, if any part of you believes there is such a thing. Sugar didn't have a chance from the time she was born and yet she had soul. People want to be respected and loved and Sugar was no exception. The book is a brutally honest account of her life and the lives she touched and those who were touched by her. This could be anyone's story with a change of details, all the good and bad, the revelations, the events that lead us down one path and not another.

      For all the emotions the book evokes, the story is still tenderly told without sparing the reader, a seeming contradiction. Words awaken the senses; you'll feel the heat, fog, fear, love, experience the scents and doubts and longing. And you'll rage against the history that this story represents for there are thousands of personal stories untold just like this one and, unfortunately, they aren't all history.
    • 5/5
      Wow, a real page turner. This is the second book I've read by Bernice Mcfadden, and her first book. I was as impressed with this as I was by her other one. Now I find out there is a book 2 of Sugar. I too have ordered it from the library.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book! Read the whole thing in one day, though I will admit that it wasn't very long. Though Sugar was a prostitute, I found myself rooting for her and hoping that things would turn out better for her. The ending of the book was one that left me just sitting here thinking of the possibilities about what could have happened next. I will definitely be looking into possibly reading more books by this author.
    • 4/5
      When Sugar Lacey comes to the small town of Bigelow in Arkansas, life is shaken up. Women eye her with disdain, men eye her with lust. This is the basis of the novel Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden. Sugar begins with a bang, immediately we are drawn in with a murder of a little girl. Emotion is ripe and we see how the murder takes a toll on Pearl Taylor, the mother of the victim. The book then flashes forward fifteen years, when the lives of Sugar Lacey and Pearl Taylor will intertwine over sweet potato pie.Sugar weaves friendship, sexuality, and small-town minds effortlessly. The friendship between Pearl and Sugar is unlikely, but I felt it worked well within the novel. Pearl is an awesome woman. She defies her friends, which reminded me of hens, to form a friendship with Sugar, regardless of her disapproval of Sugar's profession. The relationship between Sugar and Pearl is definitely not all give and take. Rather, both women give something of themselves. Pearl treats Sugar like a family member, giving her warmth that she's never really experienced.I loved that Sugar didn't dance around sexuality. The men of the book, unfortunately, cheat on their wives with Sugar, as she IS a lady of the night after all and the guys do pay her to get laid.The women of town treat sex as though it is a dirty act. They are inhibited, unlike Sugar. Pearl, too, until she sort of has this sexual awakening, in which she's all girllll I am hot stuff, and really takes control of the bedroom. I loved it. I loved that Pearl had an open mind and didn't take part in the slut-shaming with her friends.Sugar Lacey, on the other hand, I was conflicted towards. I wanted her to be happy, however, it's hard for me to approve of her lifestyle. I think tempting men to cheat is reprehensible. However, not all of the blame lies on her shoulders, as the men are the ones paying to do the dirty, therefore, I think they deserve more blame than Sugar. It's an interesting thought this novel brings out, how it seems the other woman is always the one faulted for breaking up a relationship and not the man. Clearly, there is some sort of double standard at work.I enjoyed Sugar and it definitely gave me food for thought, especially in relation to sexuality within the constructs of a small southern town.
    • 4/5
      Sugar Lacey has just moved to Bigelow, Arkansas in an effort start anew. Though she longs for a normal life, Sugar is far from normal. A prostitute since her adolescence, she is a hard woman accustomed to consorting with even harder men, and finds that she is always on the outskirts of life looking in. When Sugar's new next door neighbor Pearl Taylor comes by for a visit intending to make a new friend, the two women's lives become inexplicably entwined forever. Pearl is a modest and unassuming housewife and the tragedy of her young daughter's murder more than 15 years before comes swimming back into her life with her first glimpse at Sugar's face. Though the two women have a rocky start, soon their friendship is cautiously growing, much to the chagrin and anger of their neighbors and townsfolk. Sugar begins to find herself nestled in the family she once dreamed of having and Pearl finds herself learning to be more adventurous in her life, sharing her time and love with a woman who she soon considers kin. When an unexpected relationship begins to blossom in Sugar's life, she yearns to leave her past behind and move on towards a more respectable and safe life, not realizing that her past has clung to her too tightly to ever be shaken off. In this poignant and earnest story, two women searching for redemption and healing end up finding the solace they need in one another. But will it be enough to right the wrongs of their pasts?A few months ago, I had the great pleasure of reading my first book by Bernice McFadden. It was a novel called Glorious and it was an excellent read for me. When getting ready to review this book, I had wondered if the two books would be similar at all and if I would enjoy this second book as much as I did the first. What I found in this book was an enthralling story that weaves its way among two unforgettable characters and a story that rivaled Glorious in its messages and complexity.When the story opens up, the reader is privy to the terrible circumstances surrounding the murder of Pearl's daughter, Jude. Though the incident is dealt with in an oblique fashion, it sets the mood for the electric and volatile story to come. Jumping forward to the immersion into Sugar's life and circumstances, we meet a woman trapped within behaviors that are slowly wrecking her. Sugar is not a wishy-washy character who fumbles her way through her predicaments; Rather, she is strong and outspoken, turning her back on the society that surrounds her before they get the chance to turn their backs on her. She never feels the need to mix with the people around her, knowing that she is fundamentally different than they are, a woman damaged beyond repair by her choice of life.When Pearl and Sugar do finally meet face-to-face, there is not a lot of feel-good friendship between them. Though Pearl is struggling mightily to be a good neighbor and possibly a friend, Sugar rebuffs her instantly and won't let her get a toehold into her heart. That the two women will become great companions is uncertain, but as a reader, I could see that they both desperately needed one another. As the book progresses, the two become many things to each other and there is a sense of cohesion between their relationship and the relationships of the women who starred in Glorious. The two became not only friends but mentors to each other in a way, in addition to sharing a mother/daughter like bond. I think McFadden does a great job exploring these issues and friendships between women. They become all and everything to each other, each fitting into the roles that have been missing from the other's life. I thought the relationship between Pearl and Sugar was very complex and multifaceted. Each woman seemed to be unaware of her importance to the other. They were willing to put everything on the line for each other, to change the shapes of their hearts to fit one another's needs.As the story winds forward, Pearl and Sugar begin to explore different aspects of life together. Pearl especially becomes more open to experience and whimsy at the behest of Sugar and finds a way to live that doesn't involve shutting down her emotions. Sugar becomes more open as well, and I would dare to say, a bit more refined. It's interesting to compare both of the women and try to discover which one was growing and changing the most. On the surface, it would seem that Pearl was experiencing the most change, but in pondering the subtle changes that were taking places in Sugar, I begin to question my early assertions. Both women exhibited courage of different kinds and both began to see that the lives they led were not what would ultimately fulfill them. It was only through the reflection of the other woman beside them that they were able to have these revelations.I really liked that McFadden refused to moralize in this tale. Yes, Sugar was a prostitute, but I never felt that there was judgment of her in the writing. Instead, there was a clear and concise accounting of flaws and attributes, leading the reader to be more open to a woman that was far from innocent. Pearl, on the other hand, was the embodiment of innocence for most of the book. Both women got the same loving treatment in the narrative, for there was neither condemnation nor aggrandizement of either. I think the balance in the writing of this book must have been hard to achieve and just reading it made me marvel at McFadden's skill. Though the book does straddle dark themes and issues, I think it also speaks of great hope and, ultimately, a bit of redemption in some ways. The conclusion of this book is mired in complexity and depth, and though it doesn't have a sugary sweet happy ending, the reader is ultimately able to reach some closure in regards to the two women and their friendship.This was an amazingly interesting and deep book that kept me mired in its complexity. Though the plot was very dark, it was dense and satisfying in a way that I really appreciated. The layers of characterization and pathos was continually intriguing, and when I finally turned the last page, I felt satisfied and enriched in a way that I haven't felt in a long while. If you've never read anything by McFadden, I heartily suggest you try this book. It is definitely a page turning feast when it comes to execution, and if you are looking for a more serious read, this is the pick for you. A great read: Recommended.
    • 3/5
      The book opens with the brutal death of a sweet innocent child, Jude. A death that rocks this small town and nearly kills, Pearl, Jude's mother. Then the book moves forward fifteen years with the arrival of, Sugar, a prostitute. Sugar and Pearl bring a certain balance to each others life. They have an effect on each other that is quite unexplainable but it does help that Sugar looks a lot like Jude. The town is not as welcoming of Sugar as Pearl is. There are several rifts and confrontations that can be expected in a small town.This book kept you wanting more but writing was quite simple and sometimes it felt like the author was trying too hard. I really enjoyed all the characters. I felt like I was apart of the Bigelow community. Pearl's character was so warm and inviting as well as her husband Joe. Sugar was so complex and the author really made you feel all her emotions and inner demons. Sugar is introduced to love but it doesn't last long because she can't tear away from her past. I finished the book feeling like there were a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied up. As you will find out, things are not always as solid as they seem.
    • 5/5
      This was one of the best books I've ever read. I love this author. She never disappoints.
    • 4/5
      I didn't know what to expect from Sugar as I read the opening scene of a horrendous murder of a young black girl named Jude and the devastated mother she left behind named Pearl. The year was 1940, the place was a southern black town, and it was the era of segregation..."No one cared except the people who carried the same skin color"Bernice McFadden made me feel the anguish of a mother who lost her child; the injustice of the times as it was known nothing was going to be done about it... And then she whisked me ahead 15 years. Pearl is still mourning the loss of her daughter, Jude, in her quiet reserved manner... But there's a new girl in town, and her name is Sugar - a young prostitute looking to change her life. Sugar exudes sex, with her short short skirts, spiky high heels, and BIG attitude. Pearl is a quiet obedient church-going wife. Their unlikely friendship creates amazing changes in both of them... much to the dismay of Pearl's church going friends, but to the delight of Pearls family.Bernice is a master storyteller. Her prose is beautiful. As the layers of this story unfold, of murder, secrets, jealousy and pride, Bernice seamlessly weaves it all together to an amazing ending. I felt a whirlwind of emotions as I read Sugar; I laughed, I cried and I felt anger. I saw past those short skirts Sugar wore and found a little girl struggling to catch her breathe. And I walked through a small town scared to open its arms to someone who obviously wasn't 'one of them'... or was she? I kept turning those pages... Graphic in nature at times, but not gratuitous, you will appreciate Sugar's sincerity. You'll appreciate the rich, complex and strong female characters fully fleshed out and who don't shy away from sharing their feelings. Bernice has also captured the feel of small town life, with the soft whispers heard between small clutches of people. The story will grab your attention, and your heart, and will not let you go until the very last page.Sugar is friendship... it's honesty wrapped up in the poetry of words... it's redemption and it's powerful...
    • 4/5
      Bernice McFadden reports in an interview that she had 73 rejection notices for this book, and that when it was finally published in 2000, it was pigeonholed as a “black" book and marketed strictly to African American readers. Other reviews may point out there are some mysteries associated with this shattering and touching story, but to me, the publishing and marketing decisions are the biggest ones.In 1955, Sugar Lacey moved to Bigelow, Arkansas after an unhappy childhood with no parents and no prospects aside from prostitution. This is a woman who has spent her life in emotional isolation and in pain, and it shows in the insolence and defiance with which she now confronts the world that scorns her. My heart went out to the girl inside the woman who wanted so badly to love and be loved that when it came her way, she feared it, and only wanted to run.The women in the town reject Sugar without even knowing her; they resent and fear the effects her tight clothes and her flowing wigs will have on their men, and they allow this fear to overwhelm any Christian tendencies they claim to have. But Pearl Taylor, who lives next door, is drawn to her new neighbor; Sugar reminds Pearl of her daughter Jude, who was brutally murdered fifteen years before. A relationship between the two women that begins reluctantly but grows into something mutually affirming and supportive changes both of their lives. Pearl seeks to bring something of Christian redemption to Sugar, and Sugar strives to bring some of the joyfulness back to Pearl that was lost when Jude was killed. But Sugar’s past keeps chasing after her, because victimizers never forget an easy mark. Pearl, as a force of good, has to do battle with one of Sugar’s old johns, a personification of evil, for Sugar’s body and soul. Discussion: In Sugar, there are elements of other authors and books that come to mind: a little of the poetic obscurity – especially in the beginning - of Toni Morrison; the improbable friendship of Celie and Shug from The Color Purple; the petty and carping women's card club from The Help that could be a photographic reverse negative of the group that gets together in Sugar. Most poignantly, the character of Sugar is reminiscent of the character of Bess from DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy. In Sugar, all of these influences or similarities are blended into a unique medley to create a different and lovely song, albeit one played out in the sorrowful and contemplative notes of the blues, with some enraptured riffs of jazz from time to time.The omniscient narrative voice allows the reader to become aware of the complicated secrets of the characters’ pasts, and the hidden interrelationships of the characters in the present. The protagonists are not so privileged. But to me, this is the best of both worlds: the lives of the characters remain messy and real, while the reader is satisfied with knowing what actually happened.Evaluation: There is so much I recognized in this book: grief, fear of love, cruelty, dignity, pettiness, compassion, and all kinds of strength in women who didn’t even know they had it. McFadden is a truly talented author. It’s a shame it is only now, on the ten year anniversary of her initial publication, that she is getting some recognition.
    • 4/5
      I first heard of Sugar when I read Mel's review over at Gerbera Daisy Diaries. I knew this was a book I wanted to read, and soon. Coincidentally, Ms. McFadden emailed me about 2 weeks later asking if she could send me a copy of her book. I responded with an emphatic 'yes'! Most books don't usually make me cry or elicit an extremely strong response within me, but this one most definitely did both.The mood of the book is set immediately as it opens with the horrific murder of Jude Taylor. This murder becomes an integral part of the storyline concerning Sugar and Jude's mother, Pearl Taylor. Sugar and Pearl are probably a most unlikely pair of friends- Sugar is a rough and tumble, brash and in-your-face young woman who sells her body, where Pearl is a complacent, obedient, docile housewife who has been quietly nursing her grief over her daughter's death for well over a decade."Knowing each other's past helped both Pearl and Sugar. Secret pains, now told, bonded the women together tighter than anything else in this world."Despite their differences, Pearl and Sugar develop a familial bond in which they confide in one another, much to the chagrin of Pearl's fellow church friends.Inevitably, small-town gossip ensues.Sugar is a gritty story, full of crime, murder, sex, and secrets. Despite its sometimes graphic content, do not be put off. There is a dignity and grace in the writing that to me is reminiscent of Morrison and Hurston. McFadden has captured the feel of the 1950s Deep South and the people that inhabited it.
    • 5/5
      My second book by Bernice McFadden. She has a wonderful ability to describe people and places and experiences. This is a sad story of a life with few choices. Sugar arrives in town and it brings to light the worst of most of the people in the town. It hurts to know how much it would change if they stopped judging for awhile and learned some of the truth. Pearl seeks Sugar's friendship and gives her friendship in return, and they both benefit from the relationship that develops. But it is hard to leave the past.Highly recommended. Not an easy read, but a good read and worth it.
    • 5/5
      This book is written in rich detail, realistic characterization and superb writing. This writer's ability to capture the look and feel of the 50s Jim Crow south and the people who inhabit this small town are amazing and there is no doubt this is a literary masterpiece. Bernice McFadden has a wonderful writing style where she paces out the story line and everything is just perfect. The story of Sugar is beautiful, tragic, happy, hopeful and sad all at the same time. Well-developed characters and wonderful writing and dialogue. The author is excellent!