Reviews with content warning for Blood - Milkman

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

rory_john14's review

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dark funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.25

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almondfawn's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

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chanatova's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

2.5

Very oddly written book without much of a plot. Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. There were lots of run on sentences and the plot wasn’t necessarily discernible. I’m still not sure what just happened.

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notthatcosta's review

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challenging dark funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

2.75

I find this one tough to review because there were aspects that I absolutely loved (the world building and the social commentary around the Troubles). However, I found the writing style almost unbearable at points (the stream of consciousness prose, the long-winded way of addressing characters, the timeline jumps).

The bottom line is that I didn't really like a single character in the book, and even the protagonist made some infuriating decisions at points and overall my feeling was 'this place is not for you, you are above these people and you need to get the hell out of there' - which although a simplification, seemed preferable to sticking around in such a place. Also, her mum was a total arsehole and I don't know if I was supposed to like her, but I certainly didn't.

Overall, I'm glad I read it, and I feel like most of the aspects I took issue with were at least strong intentional stylistic choices made by the author, and I can always respect a big swing.

Oh and ALSO, the random 11th hour gay subplot was egregious.

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readbycarina's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

2.0

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smute's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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annick's review against another edition

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dark funny reflective tense slow-paced

4.25

I was really moved by the writing style and the narrator with Belfast accent. The meandering and proustian narrative was one to embrace. But I did struggle to stay focused on the book. I had previously attempted to read it three time before I finally finished it.

The collective and generational traumas of sectarian violence has so many layers of pain and numbness and miscommunication in this book. The narrator’s experience of being stalked by an unwanted older man, becomes hard to bear when she reveals she is misunderstood and cannot trust any others to help her escape this situation with Milkman.

I enjoyed the writing style. No names but descriptions. But who was Jason ? And Neil? They were mentioned near the end.

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travelseatsreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

I'm not entirely sure how to sum up Milkman or even quite how I feel about it, depending on the section of the book I was very firmly in love or hate territory!

Milkman is a story of our unnamed protagonist Third Sister as she quite literally buries her head in her favourites books and tries to get by in the manic world of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Burns uses a long flowing stream of conscious style format, which really works at times to get into the turmoil and chaos of the unusual events. However, in other seemingly irrelevant drawn out sections it had be pulling my hair out and losing concentration quite easily.

The book has a very closed in claustrophobic nature to it which in hindsight was a fantastic portrayal of what everyone must have been feeling in those communities at the time, however it does make the book quite arduous to read.

This is a book that demands your attention for every single word and insists you fully invest into it's quite unusual format. If you can immerse yourself fully then chances are you will love it.

For me, I found the first 40% dragged on and to be honest if I wasn't doing the buddy read hosted by @lostinlaurensbooks I probably would have given up. That said I did begin to enjoy it for the remaining 60% and am very glad I stuck with it.

A challenging immersive read which continues to split opinions however there's no doubt it is a great piece of literary fiction.

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