Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Night of the Living Rez

Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

20 reviews

brianna_moye's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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rnorthie's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

4.0

This is a hard book to rate. The writing was beautiful and I loved the challenge of piecing the stories together and the last 2 stories were amazing (in a sad tragic way). I think in general some of the stories weren’t my favorite but it didn’t take away from the intrigue they slowly built up to the last two stories. Definitely worth a read.

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mercerhanau's review against another edition

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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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bjdarby's review

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4.75

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sundayfever's review

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challenging dark emotional sad 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? Yes

4.5

Dark but good read. Collection of short stories strung together. Nice to read an indigenous story set here in Maine.

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ohnoitscoco's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

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lilias's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

I started reading 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘙𝘦𝘻 purposefully. It was the night they caught the mass shooter whose name I’m omitting, and I wanted to read a book that was quintessentially Maine. Author Morgan Talty is a Penobscot writer. He teaches at UMaine Orono, which is where my husband went to school.
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I am also reading haunting or horror books this month and thought this was a horror book because of the title. It’s not! I mean, yes it deals with the horrors of marginalization, poverty, and addiction, but it wouldn’t be found in the horror section.
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I found myself smiling at moments and cringing at others. Talty’s characters are very human, sometimes unbearably so. Family, friendship, and love are themes that move them along with and against each other. This book broke my heart and at the same time satisfied my urge to want to read something beautifully Maine.

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