Reviews tagging 'Incest'

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

21 reviews

aurorarory's review against another edition

dark emotional 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Sexual violence, Incest, Pedophilia, Suicide attempt, Torture, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Gore, Rape, Sexual content, and Murder

chrisljm's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

1.0

I have so many things to say (all negative) but I’m gonna try my best to not make this too long lol. But this book was so goddamn long and boring. Starting this book was so hard, it took me about 3 weeks just to read 300~ pages and I’m usually a pretty fast reader. I had to switch to the audiobook because I just couldn’t get through the book otherwise. The audiobook definitely made the book easier to read but it also made it worse because it vocalized and brought to life these characters who were pretty insufferable in my opinion. 

No wonder this book was originally released in three parts because I genuinely don’t think there is any reason this book should’ve been 1500+ pages (ebook) long. It definitely could’ve been reduced a third of its length because there were parts that were so lengthy and repetitive, and just dragged on for seemingly forever. There was a whole ass scene where the narrator went over the complete instructions of how a pregnancy test worked, what the results shown meant, as well as the science behind it. I think if just the sentences that mention breasts were cut out, that alone could reduce the book by at least 1-2 chapters. (After a quick ctrl+f, breasts were mentioned an astounding 77 times)!

I’ve heard plenty of times before that Murakami is terrible at writing women, but he’s genuinely so terrible at it that I can’t even get mad. In my opinion he should just stop including female characters in his books completely. And if he wanted to have a romance arch, he should just consider having those characters be gay, because writing this sentence, “Aomame mourned the deaths of these two friends deeply. It saddened her to think that these women were forever gone from the world. And she mourned their lovely breasts—breasts that had vanished without a trace.” is insane to me. 

The book also contained so many content warnings. Literally any tw you can think of, it’s most likely included. Luckily, I’m not adverse to reading things that contain content warnings, for the most part, but the stuff in this book definitely made me uncomfortable. And if you’re someone who hates sexual assault being used as a plot device, definitely don’t read this. 

And since I’m on the topic of content warnings, the one that I sensed from the beginning was an adult minor relationship. I also just want to point out that an adult talking about a minor’s chest and ‘beautiful curves’ is already disgusting, but it doesn’t cancel out just because he throws in that there is no sexual meaning. However, out of all the foul parts I read (there were many) the one that was the most revolting to me was a scene where these two characters found themselves waking up naked together and there was a descriptive contrast made where one of the things being compared was referred to as ‘adult penis’. I’m sure you can guess what the opposite thing being described was. Having to read that full scene made me want to die. 

There were so many times throughout the book where I wanted to dnf, because I have truly never disliked a book more than this one. But above all, more than disliking this book, I am a hater, and  so I finished it even though I wanted to unalive myself the whole time, so that I could properly write this review. 

TLDR:
Badly written female characters
Too many mentions of breasts
CW: adult minor relationship, sexual assault/rape as a plot device, incesty (mommy issues), suicide, sex scenes
Unnecessary sex scenes
Long and boring

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Torture, Violence, Pedophilia, Kidnapping, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Murder, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Infidelity, Sexism, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Stalking, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Suicide, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Gun violence, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, and Violence

Minor: Religious bigotry

dafidaf's review against another edition

hopeful mysterious reflective 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Incest

Moderate: Torture

maac's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Grief, Incest, Kidnapping, Death, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Stalking, and Suicidal thoughts

GODD THIS WAS SO EW i would rather put my finger in a mouse trap before i interact with this ok basically EVERY SINGLE WOMAN (which totaled to about 6) had a sexual relationship with the men. INCLUDING a 17 year old girl. which murakami attempts to justify?!??!??? the only reason i finished this was because i was so far in. all the women are over sexualized, the plot drags on but is still somewhat interesting to keep you reading (or bc u got like 500 pages in and figured u might as well finish it), all of it just makes you feel sick and while there’s some interesting parts none of the sickening parts needed to be added

ajhoppel's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death of parent, Death, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Incest, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Torture

kkmk's review

adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Rape, and Torture

Minor: Dementia, Incest, Murder, Religious bigotry, and Stalking

blueberryhotel's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.75

the most unrealistic part of this book wasn’t the two moons in the sky, or the

weird cult that makes doppelgängers of young girls,

or the parallel universe thing. it was that

aomame is supposedly heterosexual

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship and Sexual content

Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Death, and Incest

Minor: Death of parent, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Violence

avinawood's review

The writing is excellent, suprisingly engaging. Whether that is the author or translator's ability I'm not sure. The actual plot/contents put me off. The story is fantastical but not in a way that I can consider good. The repetition along with the actions taken by characters are incredibly off-putting and I've read plenty of other novels with heinous characters doing unspeakable things. The lack of nuance surrounding the actions though is incredibly troubling to me.

*I want to make clear that I'm aware that the three books were put together in one for the English version, however, the repition persists even within the books.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Incest, Murder, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Sexual violence

Minor: Animal death

sarah984's review against another edition

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

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

1.0

This book really disappointed me. All of the characters sound fascinating in theory, and I liked the parallel universes idea, but the writing was just really bad. Important points are reiterated over and over like the reader might not be paying attention, and plot points are over-explained (there is a part in book 3 where the POV characters are constantly missing each other and the narration is constantly telling you exactly when they passed each other by even though it's obvious - it made me feel like Murakami thinks his readers are idiots). 

All of the characters talk about taking control but just get pushed around by the narrative. Most of them hardly do anything at all.

The writing around underage girls is gross, especially a plot contrivance which allows a major character (who is a teacher!!) to have guilt-free sex with a teenage girl. All of the female characters are written very poorly and described by their breasts even when they are dead.

The romance that is basically the whole point of the book is ridiculous.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Death of parent, Dementia, Drug use, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Torture

Moderate: Animal death and Incest

Minor: Fatphobia and Car accident

yungdaikon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Sexual violence, Torture, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Incest