Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Five Wounds

woof there was a lot going on this book! but it had a lot of elements that i enjoy, a complex and nuanced family relationship being one of them! i enjoyed getting to read the dynamic between amadeo, angel, and yolanda.

there were several moments i wanted to pick amadeo up by his neck and shake him around. reading about his alcoholism and how it affected his ability to be there for his family was hard. but it made it all the more satisfying when he had a his ‘come to jesus’ moment towards the end of the book. (when i thought what had happened with connor ACTUALLY happened…wow i was about to be so mad at this book.)

i loved angel as a character. she was trying so hard and was navigating the shitty hand she had been dealt all while trying to raise her baby. and deal with her dad. and her grandmother’s illness. and her maybe feelings for a friend…..she needed a hug FOR REAL.

for all of their hardships and the difficulties they faced as a family unit, i really do like that the book ended on a hopeful note.

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ashwaar's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

This is death, then: a brief spot of light on earth extinguished, a rippling point of energy swept clear. A kiss, a song, the warm circle of a stranger’s arms—these things and others—the whole crush of memory and hope, the constant babble of the mind, everything that composes a person—gone.

As in the above quote, the writing in The Five Wounds is absolutely beautiful. Our story follows the Padilla family in the remote, forgotten town of Las Penas in New Mexico. Amadeo has been chosen to play the crucified Jesus in the annual Good Friday procession when his mother, Yolanda, receives an unexpected medical diagnosis, and his 15-year-old pregnant daughter, Angel, turns up on his doorstep after a fight with her mother. Despite the challenging circumstances and questionable decisions, the new infant brings several generations together and pushes them to re-evaluate their choices, identities and importance to those closest to them.

The story tells the harsh reality of living in a small, dwindling community in America that nobody seems to care about and what happens to the people who grow up in these places and the futures they’re told they can never have. There are some really strong commentaries on the problems afflicting these small communities, and I have provided trigger warnings below, but it can make it a little harrowing to read at times.

I want to be clear that all the characters are deeply flawed and really quite unlikeable. They make mistakes, don’t take responsibility, run away from their problems and get caught up in fantasies without thinking about reality. But you still root for them far more than the people or challenges they come up against. You keep wanting them to do better, even if you sometimes have to put the book down out of sheer frustration that they’re making terrible choices.. again…

In addition, some characters are a bit over the top, like Angel’s teacher, Brianna, who cannot get over the fact that she’s a virgin and feels inferior in educating these young women on childbirth and parenthood. Lizette can also be written a little over the top at times, and it feels a bit exploitative to the reader.

However, the writing is beautiful, and the family are messed up and broken but slowly putting themselves back together and creating something that isn’t perfect but is theirs, and that's really admirable. It’s a bit on the long side, and I found it faltered in pace at some points, but overall, it's a really strong, challenging, character-focused read.

Rating: 4.25/5

Recommendations: Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González, Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Trigger Warnings: addiction, alcoholism, cancer, car accident, death, domestic abuse, grief, medical content, pregnancy, rape, self harm, sexual assault, terminal illness

Content Warnings

cademia's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

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

4.75

I tried to read this book over the summer and put it down - so grateful I picked it back up. Such a beautifully written story <3

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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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erinwolf1997's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad 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

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laneylo's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful 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? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

This is the next book in my goal of reading through the 2022 Aspen Words Literary prize longlist. Or, in this case, listen through, as I went with the audiobook for this one. It's my fourth, of the sixteen, so I still have a ways to go, but as I mentioned, I'm making this year a more leisurely experience, as opposed to my attempt to finish them all prior to the shortlist announcement last year. Anyways, onwards to the review.

The Five Wounds is a family saga, epic in depth and scale, if not in the traditional time-bound sense, as the events of the story all take place over a single year. It opens during Holy Week in a small town in New Mexico, as Amadeo Padilla plays the role of Jesus in that year's Good Friday procession. He has high hopes that this experience will help him turn around a life that seems marked by his failures. During the crux of his preparations, his 15-year-old daughter Angel, who he hasn't really seen or had contact with in years, shows up on his doorstep, pregnant. She's had a fight with her mother and is looking to stay with him. Although these two stories, and the way they intertwine towards a redemptive future for them both, are the main threads of the story, we also see the way other familial strands intersect as well. In particular, we meet Amadeo's mother, Yolanda, who is reeling after recent news about her health, Angel's mother, Marissa, who is trying to repair the relationship with her daughter, and Brianna, the educator for the adolescent pregnancy/parenting program that Angel is enrolled in.

This novel is absolutely all about the characters and their development. There is minimal plot, really. And what plot there is can basically be guessed at, since you know that, eventually, Angel has to give birth and the health news Yolanda gets will progress. But other than that, as a reader, you are just along for the ride during this family's deeply transformative year. And what an intimate ride it is, with internal crises across the board, and numerous environmental factors, spilling over into external interactions. I mostly don't want to give too much away about the characters' arcs, since that's the bulk of the journey in these pages, but I do want to mention a few character aspects that gave me pretty vibrant reactions. Overall, these are all characters that are tough to read because of the (sometimes ugly, unlikable) recognizable truths of them, but are, of course, all the more compelling because of that. First, Amadeo's needy martyr-y thing really repulsed me, I have to be honest. The feelings of impotence that he carried evoked visceral feelings in me, and even though I did see the shame and lack of confidence (and his well meaning, if bumbling, efforts towards Angel and the baby) that made me empathize with him, I also really struggled to like him at all. A very well-written character though, and I loved that. Angel herself was an endearing character, as far as the effort and hopes she held as a young mother, despite and in the face of everything outside her control that threatened to shatter her carefully constructed, but still new/flimsy, scaffolding. While you want to scream at her unhealthy coping mechanism of pushing people away out of a need for people to fight to show they cared, an unfortunately self-fulfilling prophecy, it's also so understandable. Brianna was a fascinating and complex character, navigating the complexities of being boots on the ground and idealism for her work, with how real life can make success so difficult. As a public health professional, this is so real. And though you hate the way she handles certain things, there is also, as with all the other characters' unhealthy/questionable decisions, a personal understanding of how/why she does what she does. With Yolanda, the reader gets to see the way being too protective can sometimes lead to harmful outcomes, even when that wasn;t the intention. That kind of thing is, like the rest of these stories and realities, painful to read sometimes, but deeply recognizable.

There are a number of other themes that I want to mention that were affecting (though this was a slower read and fairly non-plot, it was affecting on a lot of levels), but they don't have much flow, necessarily, so this paragraph is likely to be a bit choppy cause I'm going to just list them all out. The intergenerational family patterns, and the efforts to try to change that trajectory, and the successes and failures therein, were super emotional. Related, the way that parenthood at/for different ages changes one’s perspective to an extreme, while not something I personally have experience with, seemed very accurate. The way Quade illustrates how restrictions from the environment/world/community can push people into coping mechanisms so unhealthy for them that the consequences reach out and hurt/affect those around them as well…is was so heartbreaking. And even just within this small family unit, the way those harmful coping mechanisms put characters into so much conflict with each other shows with profundity how much more extreme the reverberations would get with an ever growing/wider population. There is an interesting exploration of sexuality, which combined with unrequited love, and how we can’t control who stays with us and who doesn’t, and why we can’t just make ourselves like/love the easiest option, was sensitive and stirring. The look at end of life pain and decision-making and grief hit right in the feels. Quade examines substance use and addiction prominently and realistically throughout, but never in the way that takes over the characters themselves, which is so impressive. One of the major, and most breathtaking, themes was the exploration of the many ways redemption can look, the paths it can take, the circle of starting and restarting one can find themselves in. And as a deep uniting force towards the end, the way tragedy brings people together and, within that, the way people can surprise you, the way their mark stays on you even when you don’t want it to. And finally, I must mention the overarching and intricately interwoven inclusion, central to this novel’s heart, of the decisions we make and the actions we take despite our better judgment, objective knowledge, and all indications to the contrary.

The intricate family dynamics of this story, the story of a broken/damaged family and the love amongst them that tries its best anyways, are deeply recognizable, in all the good and the bad ways. This is a setting, a story, a family that is painted so clearly and genuinely that the anger and empathy you have in reaction, as a reader, matches, so well, the many emotions and confusion about emotions and navigating emotions that these characters themselves feel. It's a novel that is so tender and intimate and real that you cannot help it getting under your skin, completely burrowing in. And after all those blows to your emotional psyche, the ending leaves you with the perfect ache that comes with that ever present hope in, promise of the future. spectacular piece of literature.

“Having children is terrifying, the way they become adults and go out into the world with card and functioning reproductive systems and credit cards, the way, before they've developed any sense or fear, they are equipped to make adult-size mistakes with adult-sized consequences.”

“Yolanda is an optimist. Yolanda considers herself a happy person. Her life is filled with love and family and friends. She likes people, believes they are basically good. But this doesn't change her simultaneous belief that the universe is essentially malevolent, life booby-trapped with disaster. [...] ...somewhere buried in their past someone committed the first act of violence, and every generation since has worked to improve upon that violence, adding its own special flourish. [...] Generations of injury chewed like blight into the leaves of the family tree..."

“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.”

“She expected, after all, that people would mistreat her - that people in general mistreat other people - and though she minded, really minded, what she wanted was the time after, when they would be closer for it. Even if [they] had lied outright [...], Angel would have believed them. Even in the face of glaring evidence, Angel would have believed them, because she needs them.”

“It is so easy to cut people out, to make permanent rifts. She hadn't known this. She'd always thought there was room for fights, for cruelty, that things would work themselves out, given enough time, given enough honest conversation. She hadn't ever really wanted to push any of them away - she was only asking them to draw her close again, testing to see whether they’d let her go.”

“…he pities his old self, the self that once believed there was a single, big thing he could do to make up for all his failings. He missed the point. The procession isn't about punishment or shame. It is about needing to take on the pain of loved ones. To take on that pain, first you have to see it. And see how you inflict it.”

“What she means is that there were a million moments when events might have unfolded differently [...], when a word, a gesture, a smile from a caring adult might have changed her course, might still.”

“Love: both gift and challenge.”

Content Warnings

bookishcori's review against another edition

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emotional relaxing sad tense medium-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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