Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Human Acts by Han Kang

146 reviews

krystalgaia's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

So heavy.. reminded me of the martial law period in my own country. This book is a very good exploration of the effects of dictatorship in a state, as well as the multiple perspectives of those who lost their loved ones in the fight for justice.

Sufficiently gory, did not overdo the depiction of trauma.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

marjoleinvanderspoel's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Beautiful, blunt and absolutely heartbreaking. A necessary foray into a history that's still relevant today in Korea and worldwide.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

dmhl's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

profoundly and hauntingly beautiful. emotionally draining. took so much out of me but i knew i had to finish for Dong-ho’s sake. i will never be the same. 

After you died I couldn't hold a funeral,
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

kenyoncannotread's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

One of the hardest reads for me, emotionally, ever. Check the content warnings first, but this will be one of the best books you’ll ever read if you pick it up.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

wong_jyi's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional hopeful 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

4.75

It is stunning in its ability to weave the darkest and cruellest aspects of human nature with truth and brutal honesty, but also, with hope.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

romerojoel's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

nuii's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

4.0

I went in blind, which was my mistake because this isn't sth you just casually read...
It's a very difficult book (lots of graphic descriptions. PLEASE check TW), so brutal, so disgusting and raw...the crime that was commited, the pain and traumas it caused, the lives it had ruined... 
Han Kang writes with such haunting intensity yet, at times, there's also sth tender and delicate about it...
The 4☆ is due to the fact that I'm not a fan of this particular structure, where 1 main plot being divided into short stories among a cast. I always find it's disruptive to the flow and the connection toward each characters doesnt go deep enough -BUT- i do get why it was used here and it's a reasonable choice to have a variety of accounts for this (historical) topic. 
Overall, I cant bring myself to say I enjoy the book, it feels wrong saying that. But I'm glad I read it eventhough it breaks my heart thoroughly... still much to think about. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

warloujoyce's review

Go to review page

4.5

I think something in me cracked when I read this book.

I didn’t know anything about Gwangju before encountering Han Kang’s works. Well, as a BTS fan, I knew that it’s J-hope’s hometown. Then I read about the city’s history.

May 1980: The Gwangju Uprising was a protest against the installment of a military dictator who implemented martial law. A military crackdown led to a massacre of student protesters. Han Kang, the author, used to live in Gwangju and discovered the tragic events as a young girl.

TW: mass death, violence, torture, suicide, sexual abuse

Human Acts starts with a scene showing bodies waiting to be identified by their families. In this story, we follow a boy named Dong-ho, the events leading up to his death, and how it impacts other characters’ lives. Each chapter is dedicated to a different POV—a different lens to view the atrocities that occurred and their lingering nightmare. The last chapter is from the author’s POV.

…that room—had the boy used to spread out his homework on its cold paper floor, then lie stomach-down just as I had? The middle-school kid I’d heard the grown-ups whispering about. How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?


I expected this story to be harrowing, that’s why I postponed reading it. I can see why the content would be desensitizing but as a slow and emotional reader, I absorbed every page and it made me so sad.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the graphic scenes that wrenched me, though these were unsettling and infuriating.

It was the quiet moments that made me cry: student volunteers tending to the mutilated bodies; kids barely out of school organizing funeral ceremonies; a friend complaining about the functional fountain (because how can the world go back to normal after a horror happened in this site?); a boy looking out for the safety of other kids; a survivor saying he’s worn out; a mother remembering that she buried her youngest with her own two hands; and a writer honoring her people the way she knows how.

I didn’t particularly connect with the characters, but I easily imagined the people that they represented—a friend, a sibling, a peer, or a parent.

Human Acts asks the question, is cruelty our base impulse? It’s saddening to be reminded that it is. This book holds a mirror to our face and makes us look at the evil that we’re capable of, and the pain we can and do inflict on each other. :((

Ok stopping here because this is getting bleaker. Human Acts is powerful but heavy stuff, so I’d recommend it but only in times of enough emotional bandwidth. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

ayaminerva's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

5.0

After you died, I couldn't hold a funeral.
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.
The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines.
The mornings ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.
---------------------

Han Kang weaves their history through the lens of the aftermath. She gives weight to stories behind the frontline and highlights the convoluted relationship of loss and memory, particularly those of survivors, especially those of survivors.

Standout pieces for me were The Editor, The Boy's Friend, and The Factory Girl.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

emilosophy's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

this book was hard to pick up once i put it down. and i had to put it down often because of the graphic or horrifying content that was hard to take in. the writing style was interesting (different POVs, including “you”. though judging by the prose, you sometimes cant tell these are all different people talking, different people’s thoughts. the only one that felt clearly like a different voice was the mother’s pov, written in what i assume to be “dialect” translated over to english). the descriptions of violence, corpses, nightmares, sensations, etc, are extremely vivid and feel real. some chapters/POVs were more engaging than others.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings