Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

Hamnet & Judith by Maggie O'Farrell

19 reviews

niaaaaa's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Child death, Medical content, and Grief

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Abandonment, Animal death, Infidelity, Child abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and Pregnancy

Minor: Classism and Violence

lenni_sc's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Kein Buch was man in der Öffentlichkeit (oder in der Mittagspause auf der Arbeit) lesen sollte. Es sei denn man mag es, wenn Menschen einen mit Sorge anschauen, weil man nicht aufhören kann zu weinen.

Sehr emotionale Geschichte über Ängste, Verlust und die Leben, die weitergehen. Mir persönlich haben die Kapitel der Vorgeschichte besser gefallen und ich hätte gerne mehr über die Mutter von Agnes aus ihrer eigenen Perspektive erfahren. Gegen Ende hat mich die Langatmigkeit des Buches deswegen, wenn auch ein sehr geschickt eingesetztes Stilmittel, etwas gelangweilt. 

Overall ein sehr bewegendes Buch und eine Leseempfehlung an alle, die gerne Tränen vergießen.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Grief, Child death, Death, Abandonment, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death and Physical abuse

jules_c's review against another edition

emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Pregnancy, Animal death, Grief, Abandonment, Child abuse, and Child death

balfies's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

A beautifully wrought exploration of the lives of Shakespeare's family - his wise woman wife Agnes, his children, and especially the death of his son Hamnet. Really gorgeous and emotive exploration of what it means to love and grieve and communicate with the human experience.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Grief, and Death

Moderate: Abandonment

Minor: Blood

annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.25

4% of the (audio)book's runtime was dedicated to an arbitrary, pointless generational family saga of the flea that infected Judith with the plague. finishing the chapter, then the book, and it amounting to nothing was very insulting. i fully recommend skipping the chapter that begins "For the pestilence to reach Warwickshire…"

that out of the way, it was slow at times—part I alternates between past and present, and i felt that the past dragged on while being merely drip-fed the more interesting present—but it's a beautiful character study, heartbreaking and endearing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Child abuse, Child death, Grief, Pregnancy, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, Sexism, and Infidelity

Minor: Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, and Sexual content

excritos's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness

Moderate: Death and Abandonment

Minor: Alcoholism and Violence

bunnyreads2's review against another edition

emotional inspiring medium-paced

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

4.0

I enjoyed it but it took me a while to really get into it and more importantly, to be able to follow which character was which. Granted it’s probably an effect from listening to the audiobook while doing house chores, but still, not having clear pauses between different POVs made it pretty blurry at times. But still, the history and literary nerd in me really enjoyed exploring this part of Shakespeare’s life through this fiction setting. And the feminist in me enjoyed the attention being centered not on Shakespeare himself but his wife, kids and extended family. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Grief, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Violence, Domestic abuse, and Sexism

Minor: Abandonment

lisabee's review against another edition

emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.0

She writes extraordinarily well at the sentence level. It is a pleasure to read of the places Agnes walks, and her interactions with others.

At the story level, I am unhappy and confused. Too many strands begun and taken nowhere. It looks like she took an official biography and fleshed out descriptions and little acts without actually creating a cohesive story of the "this is what happened and why it happened and how people changed as a result" variety. In this vein, the end is abrupt, and actually not really the end of the story we read. It seems to me the end of a different story, one about Shakespeare and why he wrote "Hamlet", which is only a side-plot in what is really a description of Agnes' life as a string of events without a great deal of meaning.

And why, oh, why was the supernatural element necessary? It just made it all ridiculous.

Was her interminable grief about losing her son, or about not seeing the future clearly this one time?

.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death and Abandonment

destinycon's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse and Child death

Minor: Abandonment and Pregnancy