In The Mouth of the Sugar Dragon. Not Your Average Love Stroy - Chas Burns;Sri Das

In the Mouth of the Sugar Dragon follows Sugar, a woman in St Albans trying to keep her family life intact while carrying a growing sense of emotional dislocation. At the same time, Carl, an isolated and increasingly unstable former artist, becomes the subject of sudden viral attention after a deeply personal moment is exposed online.

As gossip, humiliation and internet spectacle begin bleeding into everyday life, both are forced to confront the versions of themselves that other people create for them. Sugar struggles with the pressures of motherhood, marriage and secrecy, while Carl drifts further into obsession, shame and public ridicule. Through missed connections, anonymous gestures and strange moments of intimacy, their lives continue circling one another in ways neither fully understands.

Set between cafés, libraries, lakesides and suburban streets, the novel explores loneliness, performance, class, masculinity, motherhood and the modern hunger to be seen. Moving between psychological realism and moments of quiet surrealism, In the Mouth of the Sugar Dragon examines what happens when private lives become public property, and how fragile human connection can survive in the aftermath.