Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Promise

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

loveyourlibraries's review

emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

2.75

I found the book overly depressing with no likeable characters. It was described as “moving fluidly between characters” but I found this technique confusing. One sentence would be describing the thoughts of one character and then the next sentence is another character’s thoughts without anything to let the reader know it had happened.

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julia_rose's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The most 5 star book I’ve ever 5-starred. This is a very special book. Exquisite prose without being pretentious. Complex characters you love and hate (except Amor and Salome who are angels) who evolve masterfully. Extremely visual, it’s rare that a book transports me to another world. Emotional but not corny and still has the odd light-hearted moment which is hard to inject into such a dark story.

I appreciated how Lukas still scolded Amor at the end so it didn’t become just another “white saviour book.

Seamlessly floated between all the characters’ heads, expert narration. Just beautiful. A beautiful beautiful book.

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geraldinerowe's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

For me, this book didn't live up to the hype. I found the writing style pretentious and gimmicky, and all the main characters unlikeable. I'm not sure whether you were supposed to like Amor, but I didn't. She claimed to want to keep her family's promise, but did almost nothing to try to achieve it apart from vaguely mentioning it in passing every ten years or so. But perhaps that's not what the book was about. The narrative seemed to suggest it was more about the family itself, and how the huge changes happening in South Africa at the time played into their story. It was fairly obvious from the titles of the four parts of the book, once you're a little way in, how the story will unfold, and there are no surprises, but Galgut is a compelling writer so it's less about the ending and more about getting there.

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karol99's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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manonh90's review

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emotional reflective slow-paced

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

1.0

I... didn't like this book. The writing style (jumping between perspectives even within sentences, the lack of quotation marks... ) really annoyed me and the story wasn't my cup of tea either: small-minded, unlikable people I couldn't care less about, who somehow reflect historical societal issues. Would have DNF'ed if I hadn't been reading it for book club. I'm also beginning to realise capital L-literary fiction might not be for me, not the Booker Prize winners in any case.

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m4rtt4's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-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

3.25

The writing was excellent; very compelling and beautiful, though it also felt pretentious at times and kept the characters at a distance. Going into the book I expected to like it a lot more than I actually ended up doing, as the premise sounded very interesting but the book ended up being very little about 'the promise' that even its name suggests. Social justice and diverse perspectives were what I expected, but instead I got rather boring relationships and white guilt and no actual action for anything. I really wanted to immerse myself in the story, and even though the sentences were beautiful, they did not manage to evoke anything in me and it was hard to concentrate on something that felt like it was purposefully keeping me away. The writing surely deserves the Booker price, but the story itself fell quite flat.

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elsaschuster's review against another edition

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reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

This book feels like one of those books that I know is good and would win literary prizes but which I personally didn’t LOVE. It was a good book, I liked the way it was broken up into sections. But I don’t feel moved to recommend it to people. I think it would have been more interesting through the eyes of Salome maybe. Solid read.

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