Reviews with content warning for Terminal illness - Assembly

Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

illuminazione's review

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

The narrator of this tour de force of a novel is an ostensibly successful Black British woman. She has made it in a predominantly white patriarchal corporate world. A promotion is on the horizon and her rich white boyfriend just invited her to family garden party. As she preaches to young girls that they, too, can get where she is, she feels her world to be a constant struggle and her 'dream' a lie, the success nothing more than a cage society's systems keep her in. When she receives a life-changing medical diagnosis, her inner turmoil reaches a breaking point.

The visceral and inventive writing style does not sugarcoat exactly how trapped the narrator feels and makes the reader feel with her. The issues discussed - racism, sexism, classism and sexual harassment - are portrayed so real and inescapable, you understand how she comes to the decision she makes in the end.

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felicityebhaslin's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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leoniefnk's review against another edition

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reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.75

This is the definition of literary girl dinner. The tangibility that Brown paints into my ears is at times gorgeous, but mostly a source of unease. Everybody should read this.

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jennanaps's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-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? No

5.0

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sydapel's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

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

Ultimately, I think this is a book I need to return to. I found the message and the writing incredibly compelling, but because it's so short (which is why I picked it up in the first place), it was hard to really immerse myself in. There's so much introspective on class, race, capitalism, etc, that I feel I can't think about it deeply without a second read. hertofore, holding any rating for the time being.

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fatfrog's review

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dark informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

hypocrisis's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

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

4.0

hard to stomach, in a good way.
more like poetry than a novel, really enjoyed the style. natasha brown knows people and how to cut to their core quickly.
there are many great quotes from this book, yet this one found its way into this unfairly brief review simply because i opened my notes app immediately upon reading it, starting the collection of quotations from assembly.

p.21
"Victimhood is a choice," Rach said. Part opinion, part mantra.

while the narrator is describing her best friend here, as the book unfolds it becomes apparent that - although they are not affected in the same way and navigate this differently - both women repress their true feelings, in the narrator's case going so for as to alter her personality, to survive an inhospitable environment (until she chooses to stop surviving).

edit: I still find myself thinking a lot about this book and i don't think it was entirely random of me to elaborate on this particular quote, though it must've been subconscious at the time which I'm slightly embarrassed about. Only now do i realise how much of the protagonists' perspective is revealed within those sentences and how they literally foreshadow the plot.

I can't do this book justice... but if you're thinking about reading it you really should!

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