Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

14 reviews

rae1019's review against another edition

challenging emotional

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Alcohol, Cultural appropriation, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Slavery, Animal death, Child abuse, Hate crime, Mental illness, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Religious bigotry, Addiction, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Gun violence, Medical trauma, Drug abuse, Drug use, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Police brutality, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, and Trafficking

scmiller's review

challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Colonisation, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Violence, Gun violence, Hate crime, Pandemic/Epidemic, Abandonment, Addiction, Body horror, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Racism, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Kidnapping, Rape, Animal death, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Confinement, Suicide attempt, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Police brutality, Trafficking, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Medical content, and Torture

Minor: Trafficking

hollyprickles's review

challenging emotional sad medium-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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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gun violence, Medical content, Addiction, Genocide, Hate crime, Police brutality, Child abuse, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Death, Violence, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, Racial slurs, and Racism

feebles640's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Colonisation, Addiction, Grief, and Gun violence

Moderate: Racism, Abandonment, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Police brutality

Minor: Child abuse, Rape, Suicide attempt, and Sexual content

hilaryreadsbooks's review

4.0

I loved how THE SENTENCE explores sentences in all their forms, hauntings in all their forms. Tookie, a bookseller at a Minneapolis indie bookstore, finds herself haunted by the ghost of Flora, a former bookstore customer and Native “wannabe.” As Tookie begins to uncover the reasons for the dead’s discontent, she also begins to unveil another layer of hurt and grief from years of being incarcerated, mirrored by the reckoning happening in the streets of Minneapolis.

A sentence. When issued by a judge, it holds the power to imprison a woman behind bars, to change her life, to subject her to the brutality of police, guards, the system. When chanted by crowds of people all over the world protesting police violence against Black and brown bodies, it holds the power to change minds, legislation, and fates. When printed on the page, its power can come from the truth it reveals: sometimes ugly and with the ability to kill.

What does it mean to be haunted? Not all hauntings end happy. And sometimes we do what we need to do to move on, to choose our own sentence: to not be sentenced, but to pull apart what a sentence can be. “Ghosts bring elegies and epitaphs, but also signs and wonders. What come next? I want to know, so I manage to drag the dictionary to my side. I need a word, a sentence. The door is open. Go.” 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Death, Child abuse, and Drug abuse

emory's review

emotional funny reflective slow-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

Some of the most completely fleshed out and realistic characters in anything I've read in recent memory. Beautiful writing and wonderful plot 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Racism, Addiction, Abandonment, Confinement, Suicide attempt, Child abuse, Cultural appropriation, Drug use, and Police brutality

farenmaddox's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

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

2.0

I genuinely feel like this is two different novels regrettably smashed into one. There is one book about indigenous identity through the lens of the bookstore and the employees who work there and the ghost, and there is a second book about indigenous identity through the lens of the current events of the Coronavirus pandemic and BLM protests, and to my mind this novel tripped over itself in trying to be both books at once. There were too many threads to follow and they all suffered from being crowded together.

In some ways, it's very reflective of real life that the story which was happening to the characters was interrupted and re-prioritized by the pandemic and by George Floyd's death, and some people may find this to be a really profound message. But to me this is not how a novel works and the story I thought was being told in the end, wasn't told properly due to the sharp turn into current events in the second half and then the sudden scramble to resolve the ghost story at the end.

I also think there is some nitpicky things that are coloring my opinion - the amount of attention given to the author self-insert character bothered me more than I can say, and the brief lapses into a different point-of-view character were glaring and weird and unnecessary, contributing nothing to the narrative and not even regular enough to seem deliberate. These things may not bother another reader.

 Overall, I would still really like to read more of Erdrich's work, because there was so much potential in this book, some very compelling passages and a charmingly dark humor. But The Sentence missed the mark for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Death, Police brutality, and Racism

Moderate: Death of parent and Child abuse

franceselsie's review

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Drug abuse, and Child abuse

sarah984's review

hopeful reflective 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

5.0

It's hard to know what to say about this book. It feels like I read it at the perfect time. A lot of heavy content is covered (incarceration, identity, reckoning with historic violence, as well as the events of 2020 as they occurred in Minneapolis) but the tone is hopeful overall. Despite some of the strange situations the characters feel grounded and real, and their conversations gave me lots of food for thought. I did think some of the stuff with the niece felt a bit unnecessary but overall fantastic book.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Grief, Medical content, Police brutality, Mental illness, and Racism

Minor: Gun violence, Slavery, Trafficking, Animal death, Child abuse, Colonisation, Genocide, and Rape

This book deals with the events of 2020 (particularly the pandemic and the George Floyd protests) in significant detail. There are also several scenes involving the mistreatment of human remains that I'm not sure how to warn for.

prettycloud's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious 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? Yes

4.75

This book feels like the pandemic: just when you think you've found the rhythms of normal life, you feel the uncertainty as threads come loose bit by bit until the whole thing unravels. It's a powerful look at the way that unraveling gave people in the US a new understanding of our own complacency, caused people to question the facts of life we'd come to accept. The energy that flowed into anti-racism work in that summer of 2020 feels vibrant and real in this book without being too trite. And it does not shy away from the nuances of systemic and interpersonal racism!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Medical content, Police brutality, Alcohol, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Grief, Body horror, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cultural appropriation, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Domestic abuse, Toxic friendship, Torture, Slavery, and Sexual content

Minor: Colonisation, War, and Racism

This book addresses the horrors of colonialism and historic wrongs, but it doesn't twist the knife or delight in violence. The characters in the present experience common experiences during the first year of COVID, from generalized pandemic anxiety to

police violence and hospitalization from the virus

. The main character had previously endured police and other violence during her incarceration, which she describes in the beginning of the book and which forms part of a later conflict. No one in the present tense of the book abuses drugs or alcohol, but the main character's mom was an addict and neglected her, and she does describe this.