Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

48 reviews

cibani's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Blood, Bullying, Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Death, Murder, Police brutality, Violence, War, Dementia, Forced institutionalization, and Gaslighting

rheagoveas's review

challenging dark sad tense 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? No

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Violence, Police brutality, War, and Blood

dahlialover's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Beautifully written book but a harrowing subject. I loved his writing style particularly when he alludes to a physical presence or tension that has been created by some act of others. ‘A strange unsettled air has filled the house. It came with the two men who called to the door…’ lynch has an amazing way of describing the unsaid truths of life and the feelings that arise during difficult times. So much of the story seems incomprehensible but yet entirely believable given recent world events. The suffering was palpable but you couldn’t ur it down. But hope springs eternal 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Violence, and War

Moderate: Dementia and Child death

artistic_nightsky's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Gun violence

oz2021's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Police brutality, Grief, War, and Death

steveatwaywords's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Much heat around this novel, a Booker winner nonetheless, and I can understand the perspectives from both sides, most carrying loads of presumption about what a reading experience should be. I prefer, so much as I can, to allow each book to speak to its purpose on its own terms, and then my reviews mark it to how well it was accomplished. 

To begin, I too, was off-put by the novel's style, at first: massive single-paragraph blocks with dialogue mashed in, the craftings of image or moment buried in unlooked-for details somewhere inside them. What was Lynch thinking? Shouldn't this be a gripping story of terror as a family falls victim to a growing autocracy and war?

Yes, it is. Claustrophobic, even suffocating, experiences a monumental blur, every event of life piled on top of another demanding our attention with equal fervor, who are we to understand and sort it out? This sense of overwhelm, as so many of us experienced during the politics of the pandemic, is tripled here. In brief, this is as much a reading experience as it is a literary novel of plot and theme.

Little need to detail the events of this woman whose men (father, husband, sons) are swept away by various circumstances to places dark and uncertain. Desperately she accepts her role of holding her family together, and at some point (you decide when but we will all disagree) her noble strength becomes ignorant folly. As the country and family slip apart, as the four children each suffer their trauma in unique ways, as tightly as the narrative camera focuses in on her, we see how easily--how anonymously--she might become a statistic of war, her story lost, disappeared.

And this growing tension is absolutely relentless. We might argue how many choices were actually available, about what sacrifices would "reasonably" be made when all is unreasonable. We might even argue responsibility for the suffering. But we will agree: the events are entirely too plausible, too hyperreal, too close to our fears and too (f)actual for communities who do suffer (and against whom we build walls).  

Build what you want. Lynch takes these walls apart, and some of us will still not believe.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, War, Violence, Torture, Hate crime, Grief, Death, and Blood

Moderate: Dementia

adamtjeerdsma's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I loved this book. The writing style through me off at first but it really worked to help get into Eilish's head. Everything was essentially a stream of consciousness but it was still easy to decipher what was going on the whole time.

(Light spoilers below)

This story did a great job of getting inside someone's head when they live in an increasingly authoritarian government

and later a peaceful town transitioning into a warzone.

You understand Eilish's rationale for every decision she makes even when you, as an outsider looking in, don't agree, you still understand.

Pulling from one of the last pages (pg. 302 in my edition), I think Mona really sums up the thoughts and feelings of Eilish (and yes, this is all one sentence):

"We were offered visas, you know, to Australia, and return them down, my husband said no, plan and simple, he said it was impossible to go at the time and I suppose he was right, and how could he have known anyhow, how could any of us have known what was going to happen, I suppose other people seem to know, but I never understood how they were so certain, what I mean is, you can never have imagined it, not in a million years, all that was to happen, and I could never understand those that left, how they could just leave like that, leave everything behind, all that life, all that living, it was absolutely impossible for us to do so at the time and the more I look at it the more it seems there was nothing we can do anyhow, what I mean is there was never any real room for action, that time with the visas, how were we supposed to go when we had so many commitments, so many responsibilities, everything has got worse there was just no room for maneuver, I think what I'm trying to say is that I used to believe in free will, if you had asked me before all this I would have told you I was as free as a bird, but now I'm not so sure, now, I don't see how free will is possible when you are cut up within such a monstrosity, one thing leads to another thing until the damn thing has its own momentum and there is nothing you can do, I can see now that what I thought of as freedom was really just struggle and that there was no freedom all along, but look, she says, taking Ben by the hand and dancing him, we are here now aren't we in so many other people are gone, we're the lucky ones seeking a better life, there is only looking forward now, isn't that right, perhaps there's a little freedom to be found and that thought because at least you can make the future your own in your thoughts and if we keep looking back we will die in a way and there is still some living to be done..."

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Blood, Child death, Murder, Violence, War, Death, and Police brutality

ronanmcd's review

challenging dark sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Hans Fallada's Alone in Dublin
It's almost too much to read. It's affecting my sleep. It's affecting how I'm looking at my surroundings. 
I never take stock of prizes, but it's easy to see how this has been winning awards. You are in it. It's inescapable.
It's set in local places, Mount Temple, Joey's school, the promenade in Clontarf. And nothing happens for stretches, but real fear simmers. That's what makes it so powerful. It's believable. It captures so well the boiling frog metaphor. Changes come in and are accepted, however begrudgingly, until it's too late and everything has changed. It's not hard to see this happening around us, particularly as the Overton window has been shunted aside.
There are moments of clarity throughout, that leap from the text. Simon, Eilish's deteriorating father, points out none of this is new. There has always been a wing that will deny truth and facts, until they are irrelevant and unverifiable. Until you believe their lies, but even then truth comes back, as facts cannot be overruled.
And later Eilish's son, Mark, says fear attracts exactly what it is most afraid of.

But then...

The book changes when war comes. It becomes a story of a claustrophobic war in a small country. I read this as Israel bombarded Gaza, going far beyond a response to rocket attacks. And with politicians and members of the press cashing for Gaza's obliteration.  ll the while politicians in Ireland acquiesce to the far right and discuss the "immigration question'
We see what brings this migration about, what it's really like to be forced to leave your own place, why we do it, why we try not to. The book's aims are huge.
But it is exceedingly grim.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Murder, Police brutality, Grief, Hate crime, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Blood, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Death, Deportation, Fire/Fire injury, Mental illness, Torture, Trafficking, Violence, Death of parent, Dementia, and War

sarahweyand's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

One of the things I really like about the reading challenges I host (especially the literary awards one) is that it forces to me check out books I never would have picked up otherwise. I had never heard of Prophet Song until it was shortlisted for (and then won) the Booker Prize. I snagged it on audio and ended up really enjoying myself.

This feels like a quiet, emotional portrait of a family with a medium-slow pace until about 70% of the way through, when things really pick up. I enjoyed the whole experience - the narrator does a wonderful job and it's lovely to have an Irish narrator for an Irish novel - but I really got wrapped up towards the end.

I don't know if this book will stick with me for a long time - it's already starting to leave my memory - but I did really enjoy my experience and would certainly recommend it if the synopsis catches your eye.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, and Child death

vicnicbasket's review

emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Child death, and War

Moderate: Sexual violence