Reviews tagging 'Mass/school shootings'

Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

4 reviews

rooree93's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, War, and Injury/Injury detail

benjiaprout's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.75

I will bet money on this being the most violent book you'll read. McCarthy writes like no other, if you're going to read this, don't half arse it. I intend to re-read this once I have the capacity to take it in entirely.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Torture, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

luis0n7i's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-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

5.0

Although this is one of the best books I have ever read by far, I would only recommend it to a few people. The prose is jarring at first and if you know anything about this book, you know the amount of explicit and terrible violence that happens within. Despite this, it is still some of the most incredible, impressive and even beautiful prose I have read in my entire life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Dementia, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

jakej's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A towering achievement, so awe inspiring and distinctly McCarthian that it challenges the ideas of what a great book has to do. There is no character development and no protagonist (except in the superficial sense of occasionally being told from the kid’s point of view) and little plot. The purposes of the book are to remind you simultaneously of the necessity of violence to the world, and as a warning of what violence will do to it. More depressing and immersive than The Road, birthed by McCarthy’s archaic and cold descriptions.

The depravity hides a lot of complexity: there are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of plot that translate into unanswered questions about the characters' psyche's. However, the characters aren’t inordinately complex: the thematic treatment is through descriptive imagery and lacerating language, not through characters facing some internal struggle. It reaches near Biblical levels in the sheer amount that can be pulled from it.

Worth reading a dozen times.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, and Mass/school shootings