Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - The Five Wounds

Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade

20 reviews

schlady's review against another edition

emotional sad tense slow-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A realistic portrayal of a year in the life of an imperfect family living through even less perfect circumstances. Very strong writing in the senses of family & place in New Mexico, also well narrated as an audiobook. The main characters were overall likable even after making difficult, frustrating, unlikable choices; I really felt for all of them as their stories twisted and turned and intertwined.

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annahelle's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective 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

4.0

this is such a solid book! really glad i read it. the author did an amazing job at expressing the characters’ thoughts, insecurities, flaws, behaviors, etc. she was really good at describing facial expressions and body language too. just a great job exploring the interior lives of this family. i really felt like i knew the characters and their thought processes. great character development. definitely a character > plot narrative, but the story was still entertaining and devastating and emotional too.

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jshroy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

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jesshindes's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful 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

5.0

This was another one from my Moon Lane Books subscription and a really solid pick to round out the year. It's a family drama set in Mexico focusing on a year in the life of a three-generation family: from pregnant 16-year-old Angel through her father Amadeo (in his 30s, a drinker, very conscious that he hasn't achieved what he might in life), to grandmother Yolanda who is suddenly forced to acknowledge that it's not going to be possible for her to carry everybody on her back forever. Things change a lot for everybody in the course of the year that the novel covers, not in a way that feels forced or implausible but more in a way that reminds you that life even in a small backwater town is still full of big feelings and enormous moments, because that's what life is.

When a book like this is done well it's reliably the kind of thing I love, and this one is done very well; all of the supporting characters are well-rounded and the relationships between everybody are complicated, plausible, and just feel like they matter. Even when the characters are unkind or stupid or reckless, you care about them; you want them to be okay. That carries you right through the story. I hadn't heard of this one before it came up as an option in the book subscription but I definitely recommend it!

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okiecozyreader's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

This is a book that has been on my list since it was a Barnes and Noble selection. It came out about the same time as Klara and the Sun and for the longest time, I got the two books confused. They are both Orange with a hand / hands on the cover, but they are so different! I don’t know if I would have eventually gotten to them, but different bookclubs read them this year and I’m glad I read this one with MomAdvice!

To me, this title and cover don’t represent the book well. I kept waiting for a deeper explanation of The Five Wounds - it is described in the beginning as part of the sacrifice of Christ. The father, Amadeo is playing Christ in a recreation of the cross story (carrying the cross and actually having his hands nailed to a cross). The title is mentioned here:

“The figure on the crucifix is a living man, a living witness to Amadeo’s transgressions. Amadeo looks from the statue to Angel, then back, hands trembling.
The artist did not stop at five wounds, but inflicted his brush generously on the thin body. And there are the nails. Three. One in each hand, one skewering the long, pale feet. Amadeo feels his own palms throb.”
Part 1 Semana Santa

There is an alternative cover (maybe UK?) that has an image of a woman holding a child and I like that cover for this book so much better. It is, to me, more the warmth of the story. Mainly told from the daughter Angel’s point of view. At 15 years old, she is pregnant and returns to her father and grandmother’s home, because her mother has a newish man in her life that Angel cannot live with. Her father has never had a job and is an alcoholic and his mother has always tried to fix his problems. His sister and her children visit, as well as the grandmother’s brother Tío Tíve. All of these family members weave in and out of the story as they cope with this young girl’s pregnancy and work at being a family. Angel attends SmartStarts!, a program to help pregnant girls learn how to become better parents and makes some friends there. She admires her teacher Brianna who at 25, is a virgin. Brianna tries to teach them skills like meditation as well as earn their GEDs.

Trigger: cancer, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, (lightly described scenes include drug use, harm - either self or abuse).

“Yolanda (grandmother) is an optimist. Yolanda considers herself a happy person. Her life is filled with love and family and friends. She likes people, believes that they are basically good. But this doesn’t change her simultaneous belief that the universe is essentially malevolent, life booby-trapped with disaster. The evidence is clear: so many bodies damaged and beaten and destroyed, washed up on the shores of her life. And her own body, harboring its deadly secret knot. It doesn’t seem normal, the sheer quantity of awfulness crowded into her family. Sure, every family has its problems, but her family problems are uglier.” P80

“This person was in her, part of her, and now he’s not. He was once hers alone, and now, for the rest of her life, she’ll be sharing him with the world. It’s amazing to her how the human body can stretch, and she thinks that if the heart can, too, maybe it can stretch big enough to fit them all.” Part II Ordinary Time p150

“This heartache is so much larger than anything she’s felt. It’s agony—she can’t sit still, it hurts so much—and also enlivening. Angel had no idea that the world could hold ache like this, just as, before Connor was born, she had no idea it could hold such love” p370 (Part II)

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funkylitchick's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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jayisreading's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I’m not going to lie, I really wasn’t that invested in this book at first. I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of characters that were thrown at me, in addition to this feel that the book started in media res. It probably didn’t help that I found a handful of them irksome. I want to say that I warmed up to them, but the reality is, I didn’t. Some of them just didn’t get the redemption arc we always want to see or something of that nature, but I could tell this was a deliberate choice given how complex Quade’s characters were that she was able to get such conflicted feelings out of me. I wouldn’t quite say The Five Wounds is a string of elaborate character studies, but I have to commend Quade for going so in-depth with each character’s beliefs, moods, personality, etc. I felt this was the case even for the side characters, and, in the end, they were the ones that really brought the story together more than anything else.

I don’t think this book was meant to give a satisfying ending or sense of resolution. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll find this book to be a disappointment. If you’re looking for likeable characters or characters to root for, you’re also not going to really find that here. However, if you want an in-depth exploration of the messiness of humans and their relationships with those around them, The Five Wounds is rich with content on this front.

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