Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

Die andere Hälfte der Welt by Christina Sweeney-Baird

17 reviews

brynalexa's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

Overall this novel was a breeze to get through; just enough diversity of prose and mystery to keep you turning the pages. I wished the idea that “power is bad no matter who has it” was more pervasive. It seemed like almost an afterthought or accidentally included. There was quite a bit of “cops are good and necessary” which was off-putting. You would hope the new world described wouldn’t include the violence of police. It felt a bit like the author threw in the notes from sensitivity readers all in the last 100 pages as an afterthought as well. Most of the characters had the same personality, even though it seems to be trying to be a feminist story. It came together in the end well. I would recommend it as an easy read if you aren’t hoping to take it too seriously. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Child death, Violence, Abandonment, Death of parent, Infertility, Death, Grief, Terminal illness, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Pandemic/Epidemic, Sexism, Misogyny, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, War, and Pregnancy

Minor: Cancer, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Mass/school shootings, Deportation, Gun violence, Alcohol, Genocide, and Fatphobia

nanirump's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This was a quick read with lots of short chapters. I found the multitude of characters a lot and I wasn't particularly attached to any of them and got them confused more than I didn't. I liked the varied exploration of peoples' experiences and it hit differently after the world actually having gone through a global pandemic. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Infertility, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Sexism, Transphobia, Suicide, War, Violence, and Pregnancy

marshiereads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

I thought the premise was intriguing, but the science and perspectives fell short. They told mostly 30-40 something’s comfortable economically storied while telling us about really interesting things happening elsewhere like the civil war in what was China. The other thing is having literally lived through a pandemic now, the world didn’t react like it did in real life. They had one riot in the book about air travel and nothing else was mentioned (outside of the civil war in china). There was no anti-maskers or anti-vaxers, which I think should have felt good but it just made me angry honestly.

I didn’t like most of the characters you saw a decent amount of (Lisa and Katherine in particular), but found other people much more fascinating yet they were talked about for only a moment (the Russian woman and Rosamie). Amanda and Dawn were probably my favorite perspectives, with the southern standford researcher being the most forgettable. 

I think, if you’re going to do that large of a cast of characters, don’t make most of them from the UK or working in the UK, it’s literally most of them and they’re mostly sad and grieving which makes sense but doesn’t add to the overall narrative that a multi-perspective story generally does.

It’s worth a read but only just.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Gun violence, Suicide, Violence, Body horror, Blood, Death, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Child death, Sexism, Terminal illness, Miscarriage, Pandemic/Epidemic, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Physical abuse, Police brutality, and Vomit

liesthemoontells's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

On the balance, I enjoyed reading this book. It was easy to read, compelling, and did a good job at illustrating the multiplicities of grief throughout the book. However, this does get repetitive, and the number of viewpoints was excessive, yet still managed to overwhelmingly be straight, white, and western. The world building wasn't as well fleshed out as similar speculative plague fiction such as World War Z and in parts rang hollow.

I was also disappointed at how straight the book was - the one lesbian character who doesn't enter into a relationship with a woman out of necessity is an arrogant sociopath, and the stories of women who fall in love with women after most men have died out are kept at a distance from the reader through news articles and interviews. None of our first person characters enter into a WLW relationship other than the aforementioned sociopath.

It also isn't until 354 pages into a 403 page book that the author spends a moment considering what traumatic impact the Plague would have had on the trans community, treating them like the afterthought that the sole trans character in the book ironically calls out the medical establishment for doing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Infertility, Medical trauma, Violence, Grief, Terminal illness, and Medical content

Moderate: Suicide, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Self harm, Toxic friendship, and Suicidal thoughts

nerdyprettythings's review against another edition

reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

This was a surprisingly fun read for such a dark topic. I loved the audio with many different narrators. Written pre-Covid, this book is about a pandemic that only kills people with XY chromosomes. It’s formatted as lots of different people’s stories, and it gets into what would have to happen when so many women are grieving while also needing to be trained for garbage collection and electrician jobs, etc., while also developing a vaccine and worrying about the future of humanity. One thing The Power (similar premise, women take charge because they develop powers) that this book didn’t was get into the violence and religious implications you’d expect, and especially having been through our own pandemic that felt like an omission. In fact, the name of the book comes from one little blog entry from an incel, but then nothing else comes from his inclusion. I did love that the author included some real life stats (that I learned from the book Invisible Women) where women by the end were now actively considered in designing uniforms, cars, and medicines.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Miscarriage, Mass/school shootings, and Grief

leannanecdote's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Medical trauma, Child death, Domestic abuse, Body horror, Chronic illness, Cursing, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Gore, Grief, Medical content, War, and Ableism

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Classism, Miscarriage, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Transphobia, Trafficking, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Sexual assault

vicky523's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Infertility, and Death

Moderate: Miscarriage and Misogyny

cheye13's review against another edition

dark emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

It started off well, but lost me around halfway. Ultimately, I'm not sure what... the point... was... 

It's pitched as a feminist dystopia, but only mentions women taking over positions of power in the briefest asides. The real focus is the fallout of losing half the population. All of the recovery is focused on repopulation: protecting surviving men, birthing healthy boys, rationing sperm. Despite the female POVs, all the attention is once more on the men. Counterintuitively, it felt like the story coddled men while women buckled down to helm survival.

The most cohesive and developed theme was not women in positions of power, but fertility.

The book is tidily bookended by Catherine's fertility problems and eventual pregnancy.

All of the grief and fear we see in-depth is for husbands and sons – not fathers or brothers. Fertility stories are important, but this one felt incidental; it was the most coherent throughline, but didn't explore the topic in any meaningful way.

The specific careers (genetics, anthropology, government intelligence) spread the content of the novel too thin. With such intricate professions, there wasn't enough research to provide more than a superficial involvement in the novel's entire premise.

The identity diversity also felt like a hamfisted afterthought rather than a significant facet of the characters that would affect their approach to events. I appreciated the acknowledgement of the trans experience, but it felt extremely shoehorned, and again, not explored in any meaningful way. Sexuality and racial diversity wasn't handled any better, and there was nearly no class diversity.

The writing style was exceedinly readable, and the narrative was generally engaging. But ultimately, I sat down for a dissection of gender in the modern world, and instead got an exceedingly heteronormative narrative that in no way challenged the status quo, skirted gender essentialism, and was also kinda depressing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Child death, Grief, Infertility, Medical content, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Abandonment, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, and Miscarriage

Minor: Alcohol, Cancer, Misogyny, Suicide, Transphobia, and War

the transphobia I mention isn't just that inherent in the premise; a trans character mentions how much more difficult life has been for trans people after "the plague," including an increase in general transphobia and transphobic violence

tilly_and_the_books's review against another edition

emotional hopeful sad fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Miscarriage, Infertility, Death of parent, Child death, Death, and Terminal illness

thelibraryofanna's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Death of parent, Medical content, and Grief

Moderate: Miscarriage, Infertility, and Pregnancy

Minor: Abandonment, Suicide, and Misogyny