Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

10 reviews

mercerhanau's review against another edition

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

2.75

I started listenings to the audiobook on a friend’s recommendation (can't remember who?) without actually reading the back-of-book-type introduction at all. I think I went into it expecting something more supernatural/horror, which is not exactly what this book delivers (in the usual way). I set myself up for genre disappointment, so take my review with a grain of salt.

It’s a reflective set of stories, looking at slices of life from the narrator as a child, teenager, and mid/late 20s, looking back from later in life. Lots of drinking and suffering from drug addition, wanting to get clean. Depressing, occasionally funny, a LOT of scenes with varying degrees of nausea, dry heaving, and vomit. Unpleasant. But there are also scenes of tenderness that help flesh out the characters.

The title (and a couple references to zombies) encouraged me to look for what could be “horror” or the supernatural in stories that otherwise feel like a fictionalized memoir. Animal presences serve as metaphors that connect interpersonal struggles to the natural world in all its power, chaos, and… stenches.

More thoughts on real-life "horror": SPOILERS / Content Warnings

Horrors of caterpillar corpse carpets, decaying snapping turtle smell, miscarriage, child deaths, postpartum depression, having a dead twin (like a teratoma?), feeling responsible (sort of) for a sick infant’s death while still a child yourself, social services knocking incessantly at the door while home alone with one’s sister’s baby (feels like a zombie movie), dementia resurrecting ghosts/memories of long-dead relatives, witnessing physical and sexual violence, car crash, feeling disconnected from one’s body and mind in the throes of drug addition and withdrawal.

Feels like an important story to tell. Nuanced representation of a deeply interconnected Native community and family. The writing style and characters didn’t resonate with me, and that’s okay! I definitely see why other people love the book.

Cf. / Reminded me of themes in…
- Wellness, by Natan Hill:

psychologically shifting stories and guilty uncertainty about what really happened during a childhood tragedy.

- The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones:

Indigenous perspective on spooky pregnancy stuff. The horror of nature (esp. animal-related). Losing contact with indigenous knowledge that might have helped prevent/dispel the horror.

- Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare, by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto:

More spooky reproductive/fertility stuff, whether supernatural or just things that happen to human bodies that aren’t talked about thanks to patriarchy keeping reproduction a mysterious, taboo subject. Complex feelings about family dynamics, both tender and cruel.

- This Thing Between Us, by Gus Moreno:

curses, generational trauma, feeling haunted by lost loved ones and/or forces beyond our understanding. Losing one’s mind a lil bit. Gore. Technology running amok, sometimes in subtle ways: Grammy’s car radio turns on by itself, like the Itza (Echo Dot equivalent) in TTBU.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Vomit

Moderate: Blood, Child death, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Dementia, Miscarriage, and Car accident

Minor: Pregnancy, Medical content, Sexual assault, Animal death, Infertility, and Racial slurs

readingwithkaitlyn's review

dark emotional reflective sad fast-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? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Miscarriage, Murder, Mental illness, Ableism, Drug use, Grief, Chronic illness, Racism, Death, Pedophilia, Domestic abuse, Animal death, Child abuse, and Body shaming

Moderate: Car accident and Infidelity

Minor: Child death and Rape

Neglect, fraud, MMIWG2S, drowning, intergenerational trauma, baby addicted to methodone, postpartum depression,

tessatalksbooks's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Dementia, Infertility, and Miscarriage

sdupont's review

dark emotional reflective sad 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

This book packs some heavy material. The short stories are all interconnected as they have the same characters across different time points (though not written in sequential order). I usually struggle to get into short story compilations and that was true for this book as well especially with the heavier content. I wish the stories were a little more separate content/character wise or that the book was written as a continuous novel. That being said the characters have a lot of depth and I found myself wanting to see what would happen next. I still would recommend giving this a read though!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, and Drug abuse

Moderate: Miscarriage, Alcoholism, and Racism

Minor: Sexual violence and Animal death

alyssasaurus's review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Car accident, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Dementia, Excrement, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Addiction, Child death, Cursing, Abandonment, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, and Vomit

sarah984's review

dark funny reflective sad slow-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? Yes

3.0

This is a collection of short stories about incidents in the life of one character on a reservation in Maine throughout his life. Some of the stories were better than others (the stories about the friends messing around kind of blended together for me, but the titular story was incredible) and they're told out of chronological order for a reason I couldn't really grasp aside from putting the best story at the end.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Alcohol, Drug use, Grief, and Vomit

Moderate: Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Dementia, Medical content, Mental illness, and Racism

Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Stalking, and Toxic relationship

uglypopcorn's review

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad 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

5.0

Beautifully crafted - I'm still thinking about this book days after finishing.

The characters are so vivid & real, I was looking forward to my reading time just to hangout with them in my mind. I found myself laughing at the little actions that shaped these complicated, flawed beings. But also, I felt all the twists and turns of sadness and anger in my gut. Development occurs with fluidity and grit - and not in the direction you might expect.

I'm amazed these chapters were published at different dates. They weave together so seamlessly!

Hands down one of my favorite novels. I want more from this author. I *need* more.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Racial slurs, and Violence

Minor: Sexual violence

internationalreads's review

adventurous dark mysterious sad fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Vomit

taylorjayne's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Violence, Addiction, Child death, Colonisation, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Miscarriage

Moderate: Child death, Infertility, Racism, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, Violence, and Car accident

Minor: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Vomit, Terminal illness, Racism, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Medical content, Dementia, Classism, Blood, Cursing, and Animal death

marywahlmeierbracciano's review

challenging funny sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Morgan Talty’s debut collection is enchanting, with stories that follow the same people and the same places amidst shifts in role and experience along a nonlinear timeline.  On a Penobscot reservation, a young boy gradually grows up, his perspective countered in other stories by that of himself in early adulthood.  Talty’s stories are made of connection and play, survival and addiction, softness, danger.  They explore that which is inherited, that which is inevitable, that which can be changed, that which cannot.  They are often humorous and often sad, and they are brimming with life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse and Addiction

Moderate: Racism, Pregnancy, Grief, Dementia, Death, Child death, Car accident, Alcoholism, Violence, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Death of parent, Blood, Alcohol, and Miscarriage

Minor: Animal death, Sexual violence, Pedophilia, and Vomit