Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - The Yield

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

The Yield by Tara June Winch

29 reviews

colormecaro's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad 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? No

4.75

At first (and the only reason this isn’t 5 stars), it took me a bit to get in a reading flow because of the changing viewpoints the book is told from (a dictionary, an old letter and the main character) but at some point I just started devouring this book.

As someone who is interested in language and the effects it has on how people think and see the world, I loved this book. As a speaker of different languages (although the languages I speak are nowhere near as complex and full of meaning as many an indigenous language), I appreciated the way in which this book illustrates how words can’t simply be translated. They hold a whole other dimension which is shown in the dictionary chapters of the book. By losing indigenous languages we lose all the knowledge they hold.

Apart from the language aspects, learning more about a culture that has seen the cruelest hardships feels very important. When I was 4 years old, I became fascinated with Australia (mostly its animal world) and as a 6 year old read the stories of the Dreaming (aboriginal origin stories). I was probably too young to reckon with the dark past of Australia, but this feels like a full circle moment. It all ties into my current interests and feelings about the world. I am on a mission to read more indigenous literature from around the world and this was a prime example of my why.

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neonskylite's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Discovered when reading this that my Aboriginal friend is distantly related to Stan Grant

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anniereads221's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

This book was a book I had to reread after reading it once. I listened to it and was getting information but did not at all understand how each chapter was interconnecting so I decided to reread it after looking at some people's reviews of it, and understood a lot more of the book as a whole and enjoyed it a lot more

The three points of view as follows is:
August centred POV in the third person
Grandfathers dictionary
And a letter is being written by a reverend of the ex-missionary

When it throws you into the story of August going back to her family home in massacre Plains to go to her grandfather's funeral. She hasn't been home since she was sent to Britain and stayed. She wants to find her grandfather's dictionary that he was seen writing before his death. But with that, she also has the memory of her sister in her mind as her sister went missing when she was a child.

The more we learned, the more I was intrigued and was enjoying the journey of this book.

I feel like this book won't be for everyone, as the POVs prove. But I am so glad I decided to reread it and understand how it all fitted together properly in the end.

I am glad I started with this book for 2024 after my rereads of the Monk and Robot series

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rainbowpizzastars's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

Heartbreaking, but important telling of how just one trauma affects multiple generations, and then can be compounded by the inter-generational trauma of Australia’s violent colonization and brutality toward indigenous people of the land, and what it takes to even start healing.

Ending felt rushed and a bit incongruent with the pace and nature of the storytelling in the rest of the book.

Also if you don’t like books that skip between different narrators or POVs, you will probably struggle with this book.

There were some confusing parts where the POV briefly shifted off the main characters via whom the story is told.

Overall, I read this in one day - it was compelling.

Edit: I think the digital version has some typos?

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