Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Góry śpiewają by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

32 reviews

rachel101's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, War, Injury/Injury detail

michimiya's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Torture, Abandonment

Minor: Rape, Suicide, Terminal illness, Vomit

lightsleeper_heavydreamer's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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This was a wonderful family saga and I cried and learned a lot! The things I knew about Vietnamese history I mostly had from museums, this book brought history to life in all its tragedy, cruelty, all its sorrow and grief, all its persistence and kindness and love. At times this story is almost unbeatably sad and I felt so much for the family and everything they had to go through but it also managed to be hopeful throughout. The women here are so strong for their persistence and their unwillingness to give in or to lose their kindness. 
Highly recommended the audio book, there's so many Vietnamese proverbs in this and   hearing them spoken by a Vietnamese speaker and not just reading them wrongly in my head.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Miscarriage, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, War

sas_lk's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad

Loveable characters: Yes

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I don't have much to say, other than I just really liked this book. The author kept me hooked from start to finish, even though it was a historical fiction - which are usually quite dense, which means that i regularly need breaks. However, it was so easy to keep reading, and I felt truly "transported" - the same way Huong was transported to Laura's world. 
Painful, heartbreaking, but so inspiring and hopeful in the end. A novel about the horrors, and the truest beauties of life. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, War

Moderate: Miscarriage, Abortion

Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Confinement, Rape, Suicide, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail

greatlibraryofalexandra's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This is a spectacular book. Its lyrical and breathtaking and sweeping in scope. It taught me I know nothing about the Viet Nam war. It's got all of the depth and sprawl of books like 'Pachinko' and 'Peach Blossom Spring' and the epic staying power of novels like 'Homegoing' and 'Infinite Country' and everything Khaled Hosseini has ever written. It was riveting and searing. 

It could also be frustrating; despite how much I loved the book, I often felt like the characters were almost too naïve deliberately so the author could use them as a mouthpiece for philosophical arguments; i.e. Huong being 15 and not understanding what rape is so that the book can make the argument that no one should be shamed for violence inflicted upon them. There were other instances of this that tested believability, but for me it didn't drag down the impact of the novel. I'd recommend this to anyone and it will have a permanent place on my bookshelf and rotation of revered books. 

I will say that I almost, almost knocked this down one star because I thought it was so unbelievably stupid that Tam's grandfather was Wicked Ghost. That was too much for me, too 'connected', and even though it resolved well, I hated it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cancer, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism

annorabrady's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I loved the look into the history of Vietnam through the generations. The characters and their stories were fully fleshed such that it reads more like a memoir than a historical fiction. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Hate crime, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Police brutality, Abortion

singout's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Powerful story about three generations in North Vietnam: it goes back-and-forth between a young girl’s experience of the end of the Vietnam war, and her grandmother’s survival of the 1940s great hunger and harsh land reform, with the middle generation being portrayed either as children or soldiers.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail

edilund's review against another edition

emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicide, Torture, War

catalyst226's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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This read like narrative poetry and was very beautiful and incredibly sad. The overlapping generational storytelling was engaging and I found myself drawn to the emotions the author detailed in each section.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War

Moderate: Suicide, Abortion

carlamari_13's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism