Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

10 reviews

wanderingtones's review

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Hate crime, Racism, Violence, Murder, and Classism

Moderate: Child death, Racial slurs, Suicide, Police brutality, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Mental illness, Self harm, and Torture

m_papaya's review

4.0

Bleak, violent, read in one sitting. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Gore, Gun violence, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, and Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Animal cruelty, and Bullying

Minor: Islamophobia

kananineko's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Racial slurs, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Abandonment

Minor: Cancer, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, Islamophobia, Cannibalism, Pregnancy, and War

daniellekat's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

3.5

Like all short story collections there were a few misses here for me, but overall the writing was strong and thought provoking. Stand out stories include: The Finkelstein 5, Zimmer Land (my favourite), Friday Black, and Light Spitter. I disliked that a few stories were somewhat connected. Having read the author’s novel Chain-Gang All-Stars, you can tell that he has a lot he wants to say. For me, the short story collection was more successful in achieving that goal despite being more disjointed. Each story felt more focused on a theme or topic where the novel tried to take on everything. It’s obvious he is a talented writer. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, and Murder

Moderate: Bullying and Child death

Minor: Abandonment

lyssalandart's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Self harm, Suicide, and Violence

sarah984's review against another edition

dark reflective medium-paced

3.5

Some of the stories in this collection were phenomenal, visceral writing - speculative fiction at its very best - but the rest varied between forgettable and downright bad. I would say it's worth it for the good ones.

Favourites: Through the Flash, Zimmer Land, Friday Black, The Finkelstein Five

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Ableism, Drug use, Gun violence, Self harm, Suicide, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Child abuse, Homophobia, Cannibalism, and Classism

j_m_alexander's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

 Biting, gut-punching short stories that are frighteningly sad and darkly humorous at times. Like all short story collections, this collection is a bit of a mixed bag, some nearly perfect, others falling a slightly short by comparison. The collection started and finished particularly strong - that first short story was a haunting and powerful statement to start with, the final story while similarly startling finished with more of a lingering bitter-sweetness; truly perfect choices to book-end the collection. There were a few others in the latter half that I felt really built on one another in a way I really liked as well. Adjei-Brenyah makes an undeniable impact in a short amount of pages/words, leaning toward dystopian of the rather violent variety. Not every story hits quite a perfect balance but when they do, it's a real triumph and will keep you thinking about them long afterward.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Mass/school shootings, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

emily_mh's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Mass/school shootings, Abortion, and Murder

Moderate: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Gore, Racial slurs, Rape, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Cannibalism, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Cancer, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

Lynching, colourism, loss of a loved one (including a child), eugenics, menstruation, trampling, sick parent, homophobic slur, nuclear bombing

booksthatburn's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

FRIDAY BLACK is a finely constructed collection of stories which range from simply invoking a certain kind of Black and American existence, to ones where the premise is inextricable from the intersection of these identities. 

Some of them have not literally happened but feel like they could if reality got just a little bit worse (or, more awfully, like they’re already here). Others are more speculative, requiring some shift in reality in order to be plausible, or being altogether impossible. In all of them, the relevant social and existential rules are deftly conveyed to build tiny pockets of a different space, in which a story is told that believes its own premise unabashedly and wholeheartedly. 

Three of the stories have a shared underlying reality, but I’m not certain whether the others are meant to be connected with them or not. None of the premises are mutually exclusive, but a few would definitely be oddly paired if they canonically coexist. My favorites are “Zimmer Land” (for the way it shows the precarious position of a marginalized employee in a job which objectifies his existence even as it exploits his identity), Friday Black” (for making shopping feel like a zombie story), and “Through the Flash” (for unflinchingly capturing the potential and inevitability of brutality in a certain kind of time loop).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child death, Death, Gore, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Bullying, Cursing, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, and Medical content

Minor: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Vomit, Abortion, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

horizonous's review against another edition

The collection opens up with a gut punch of a story called "THE FINKELSTEIN 5" and I highly recommend it, beyond that I was more or less completely lost, or in the case of "LARK STREET", repulsed. To me that story striked me as blatantly pro-life with a teenage couple who decides to have an abortion and the two aborted foetuses coming back to guilt-trip the guy for a night.. After that I kept reading because I thought there must be something more to this collection with all the praise it gets, but when I couldn't even get through its titular story I decided, this wasn't for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Self harm, Violence, and Abortion

Moderate: Child death, Gore, Gun violence, Blood, and Murder