Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

4 reviews

fanchera's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Grief, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Suicide and Mental illness

Minor: Infertility and Animal death

tourthebookshelf's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Gore, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Grief

The contents discuss the 2011 tsunami and specifically the deaths of a large number of children and the effect it had on the local area. It discusses the discovery of multiple bodies throughout but it is not gratuitous imho

carrie_wallace's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Death, and Mental illness

jhbandcats's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

This is probably the most difficult book I've read in recent memory. Its focus is the preventable deaths of dozens of middle school children in the tsunami that followed Japan's huge earthquake on March 11, 2011. Through human error, negligence, and general ineptitude and confusion, seventy-four children were led to a "safe" evacuation spot that was in the direct line of the tsunami. They all had time to seek sanctuary on the nearby low hills behind the school, but none of the children assembled in the schoolyard that afternoon survived. The ones who did were picked up by their parents and driven away to higher ground. Of all the schools in the disaster zone, this was the only one where children died in the tsunami.

This book is based on several years' worth of interviews with survivors, the family and friends of the dead, priests ministering to the irreparably shocked and broken-hearted, and municipal workers. The author puts their anguish on the printed page in a way that's unforgettable. Their stories are so painful that I contemplated quitting the book several times - it was just too hard to read. That said, the book is a well-written, sympathetic analysis of Japanese society and the response to a tragedy that didn't have to happen.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Grief, and Infertility