Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

13 reviews

infinite_harness9030's review

challenging reflective 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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Death, Excrement, Medical content, Blood, Gore, Emotional abuse, Confinement, and Cursing

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Sexual content, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, Violence, Vomit, Racism, Self harm, Slavery, Classism, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Animal death, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Drug use, Physical abuse, Pandemic/Epidemic, Panic attacks/disorders, and Abandonment

marioncromb's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

It's an impressive book, i appreciated the anticolonialist, anticapitalist, trans centred and  affirming (albeit magically rather than plausibly optimistic) lens.

I wanted to love this as much as i loved LOTE, which has similar alternate-history vibes but I just didn't. i personally found the obtuse academic style prose referencing Derrida etc in the sort of language that is only understood by philosophers to be alienating and a bit of a slog to get through. I understand that it makes sense for the realistic characterisation of Voth, and is realistic for the metapremise of the novel, but still, I didn't really enjoy the interjections/the personal story within the footnotes. I know that you don't have to like the characters to like or appreciate a work of art but it was an issue for me here. I often love the tangents of footnotes (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell my loveeeee) and i did appreciate the ways in which the stories mirrored each other. However I was half-expecting from this mirroring

the manuscript to have been written /by Voth/ due to the sheer coincidence of finding this very relatable manuscript on a niche topic they study whilstthey are having a life crisis due to their breakup. which i guess in a metatextual sense it /was/,  by /Rosenberg/, but it wasnt in the world of this book which made it lack in-universe plausibility. Or maybe it was just one meta- too far for me

Another personal issue i had with the book was its idea of queerness was often too easily found though queer sex, queer bodies, more than through all ways of being/loving/not-loving that are othered by society. As an ace person i just didn't relate to the horniness in the book that was often posited as some universally relatable and transformative queer experience. This is not to say that it shouldn't have been so horny, it is an important part of the characterisation and indeed of the queerness of the book.

I enjoyed more the stories within the story: enjoyed learning about the Fen-Tigers and enjoyed the imagined paradise society of the Maroons. The little details of Jack's woodworking/technical knowledge.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Medical content

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Violence, Vomit, Xenophobia, Blood, Death, and Dysphoria

Minor: Murder, Police brutality, Suicidal thoughts, Confinement, Alcohol, Slavery, Death of parent, Classism, and Colonisation

el_wheel's review

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Dysphoria, Blood, and Medical content

Moderate: Sexual content and Abandonment

Minor: Deadnaming

opossumble's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring tense 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Gore, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, and Transphobia

Moderate: Slavery, Excrement, Drug use, Alcohol, Classism, Murder, Colonisation, Cursing, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Vomit

singlier's review

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious fast-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? Yes

4.0

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg 4/5 🦊s 

This book is weird--part memoir, part unhinged rambling footnotes, part collective memory. It reimagines the life of famous Victorian thief, Jack Sheppard, as a transgender man, exploring the intersections of his identity with period-accurate racism, incarceration, destruction of land, government corruption, and colonialism. It is also a story-within-a-story: told in the footnotes of the memoir is the story of Dr. Voth, a transgender man and college professor, currently grappling with the loss of his love and his debilitating OCD, who imprints onto Jack and uses the footnotes as the pedestal for self-reflection and anti-academia rhetoric. 

At the end of the novel, I can't say I understood everything. It is committed to its appearance as an authentic 18th century text, which means it is dense and difficult to parse. The footnotes only add to its difficulty: calling upon a vast array of knowledge from Marxism to queer theory. The plot too, often feels scattered: caught between a mysterious conspiracy of government corruption and Jack's unquestionable love for his partner. But, with all this, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I could not predict where it would lead me, but I enjoyed the journey there. 

Minus points for a lot of mentions of piss, even though it does (eventually) become plot relevant.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Colonisation, Gore, Racism, Vomit, Sexual content, Blood, Classism, Excrement, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Violence

caseythereader's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense 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

4.5

Thank you to One World Books for the free copy of this book.

 - CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX is one of the strangest, most fascinating books I’ve ever read. I loved the structure, with the body of the book being the “lost manuscript” and the footnotes being the professor telling his story alongside the manuscript.
- There is so much going on here, I hardly know where to start. Everything from the historical erasure of trans people to the prison industrial complex is pinpointed and torn down in a frenzy.
- For me, things got a bit muddled at the end of the book, but overall this book is well worth the trip there. Do pay attention to those content warnings though, as it’s pretty grossly graphic throughout. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Dysphoria, Excrement, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Gun violence, Violence, Cursing, Death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Classism, Grief, Murder, Racism, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual content, Alcohol, Deadnaming, Medical content, Xenophobia, Vomit, and Colonisation

julianship's review

challenging dark emotional tense 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

3.75 with the frame narrative, 4.5 if you skip the footnotes (shocking coming from me!) I held off on reviewing this for a while, because I wanted to percolate on it. I actually started reading the book way back in January in audio format, was moving through it fairly slowly, got concussed, and simply could not get back into it. Physical format was much more successful! In part, I think, the audio format does not handle the extensive and discursive footnotes particularly well, and in part because the beginning of the book is heavily concerned with Dr. Voth, and I simply didn't like him very much. I've read about a lot of sad-sack transmasc characters this year, and only some of them are enjoyable. He got a lot more bearable in print! 
That being said, the narrative of Jack Sheppard is well-done; Rosenberg nails a particular sort of 18th-century cadence (possibly anachronistic; I don't really care.) Jack's narration is as slippery as the thief himself, both poetic and crude. The end of the book is spectacular, and Bess's discussion of the Fens is lovely. 
Even in print, though, I found myself wishing the footnotes weren't there at all - as much as I enjoy a metanarrative, I think there's enough metanarrative present in the "18th century" portion itself, which touches on environmental destruction, the carceral state, the new calcification of racial categories, and transgender lives and loves. I don't think the book actually needed our modern day Dr. Voth in order to make the narrative speak to the present; it does that just fine on its own without the frame narrative, and I ended up getting distracted trying to track the details of his near-future academic dystopia. 
So, overall: great book, loved Jack and Bess, (shockingly for me) could have done without the frame!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Transphobia, Slavery, Xenophobia, Racism, Police brutality, and Medical content

streberkatze's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence

Moderate: Excrement

bronzeageholly's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring reflective tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Sexual content, Police brutality, Murder, and Medical content

Moderate: Blood, Death of parent, Transphobia, Drug use, and Alcohol

Minor: Vomit

bookishkoala's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective 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

5.0

I  found this book deeply meaningful and relatable. It’s a radical reimagining of an infamous London jailbreaker as trans with a modern trans academic offering his commentary under an oppressive, capitalist university.

It dissects capitalism at its beginning (1700s) and end (present) and talks about the history and importance of community and resistance in facing down colonialism and capitalism. I cried at the end.

I haven’t connected with a book so much in a long while. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Violence, Racism, Death, and Sexual content

Moderate: Transphobia and Deadnaming