Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

15 reviews

jolineliest's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Animal death, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Suicide, Physical abuse, Sexual harassment, War, Domestic abuse, Gore, Blood, and Grief

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body horror, Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Vomit, Animal cruelty, Homophobia, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Body shaming, Genocide, Antisemitism, Cursing, Excrement, Deportation, Drug use, Fatphobia, Mental illness, and Sexual content

mandi_lea's review

dark sad slow-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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Abortion, Child death, War, Rape, Physical abuse, Animal death, Antisemitism, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Blood, Death of parent, Death, Mental illness, Murder, Suicide, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gun violence, Infidelity, Medical content, Violence, Sexual violence, and Pandemic/Epidemic

akvolcano's review

adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

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

1.5

 Honestly it just feels like the author put all the drafts together and made a book out of it. It feels like it’s the same story rewritten over and over again, with slight changes. Wouldn’t recommend reading. The book itself is an interesting concept, but it was not executed well at all.

When I read that the main character has multiple lives, I was excited! But the character doesn’t remember their past lives. And recantation is mentioned twice in the book, but both times are offhand and not really a big deal/significance. Pretty disappointed. I also couldn’t find any of the characters to be lovable, it feels like I barely knew them. Also-idk if it was just me, but the amount of graphic violence and/or uncomfortable topics was completely unnecessary  to the story line. Perhaps two or three would have been consumable, but dang not this much.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Cultural appropriation, Miscarriage, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Antisemitism, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Racism, Classism, Domestic abuse, War, Genocide, Gun violence, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Ableism, Colonisation, and Pregnancy

courtneyreadsometimes's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, War, Gore, Genocide, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexism, Murder, Mental illness, Violence, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Child death, Sexual content, Physical abuse, Medical content, Sexual harassment, Self harm, Rape, Misogyny, and Gun violence

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Antisemitism, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Vomit, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Child death, and Death of parent

emtees's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

This book starts with a major spoiler.  In the first chapter, the heroine, Ursula Todd, takes an action that should have major consequences for not only herself, but the entire world:

she kills Hitler

.  I call that a spoiler instead of just the start of the plot because after that event, the book flashes back twenty years to Ursula’s birth, and if you didn’t have that first chapter telling you that the book was leading up to Ursula playing such a huge role in the world, you would never guess that’s where her life was going.  But that’s because, at first, it’s not.

In the second chapter, Ursula is born in 1910 and dies almost immediately.  In the third chapter, she is born again, but this time, rather than being stuck in a snowstorm, the doctor arrives in time to save her life.  But tragedy strikes again a few years later, and then Urusla is born for a third time, and lives and dies, and so on, for over a dozen different lives.  The lives she lives are all a little different, but there are common notes; a few times she manages to veer off in an entirely new direction, such as the two lives in which she marries and her husbands take her off to very different, tragic ends, but for the most part Ursula grows up in the English countryside in a large, typical family and then, if she survives her childhood, she goes to London and lives through the Blitz.  At first, these lives seem unconnected from each other, different variations on the same woman’s life, but as the book progresses it slowly becomes clear that Ursula is living these lives one after the other, and while she doesn’t really remember her previous lives, the buried memories of them begin to effect her.  In one stretch of the book, she dies in a nearly identical way for several lives in a row, and with each new life she becomes more aware of the danger and more desperate to stop it, even if she doesn’t fully understand where that premonition of danger comes from.  Her family sees her as afflicted with deja vu, something that gets worse in each subsequent life, as Ursula encounters more and more reflections of events that have already happened.  Eventually she begins to take action directly based on these premonitions, not only to stop her own deaths but to help others, culminating in the event from the first chapter.

The plot wasn’t really the strength of the book for me.  The idea of reincarnation over and over into the same life, and the possibility of actually changing things, is interesting, but I wasn’t totally satisfied with how it ended up and I found the end of the book a little confusing.  (I think I figured out what happened in the final lives, but at was based on some leading questions in the author’s note at the end of the book; otherwise I would have been totally lost.). But the strength of the book was really in the themes and characters.  The theme of the book is “what if you could live your life over and over until you got it right?”  But the book questions what “getting it right” would look like.  Ursula is happier in some lives than in others; she accomplishes more good in some than others; there are lives where things don’t work out great for Ursula but circumstances are better for her loved ones.  The life in which she dies the most miserable death, and make the worst decisions, is also arguably the one where she experiences the greatest love.  Which of these lives is the one where she “gets it right?”  As Ursula becomes more aware of what is happening to her, she has more opportunities to make conscious choices about how to live her life, but how is she supposed to know which choices are the right ones?  Who defines right?

With each life, the story revisits the same mundane circumstances of Ursula’s usually very ordinary life, and so we get to see it over and over from different angles.  I came to really appreciate Ursula’s family after seeing them through so many lives.  Relationships get examined from different angles because the circumstances change slightly from life to life.  Meanwhile, Ursula herself seems to change from the experience of reincarnation.  A great part of the book is seeing the subtle ways her experiences in one life shape her in the next; an event that traumatizes her one time around is faced with strength in the next and bemused equanimity in the one after.  The Ursula of the early chapters is a bit of a blank slate but by her last life she is bold, decisive and fearless.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Domestic abuse, Child death, Violence, and Death

Moderate: Rape, Abortion, Suicide, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Antisemitism and Sexism

The plot deals heavily with the Blitz and is explicit in depicting the violence of war. A character is in an abusive relationship and

is killed by their spouse

A plotline involves a character become pregnant through rape and having an abortion under coercive circumstances A main character commits a murder/suicide

of her child

shibaunited's review

challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Abortion, Antisemitism, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, Sexism, Rape, Misogyny, Gun violence, Genocide, Deportation, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Medical content, Death of parent, Death, Suicide, Excrement, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, War, Violence, Pregnancy, Infidelity, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Emotional abuse, Confinement, Blood, and Animal death

battysbooks's review against another edition

emotional mysterious sad 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War

Moderate: War, Child death, Death, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Rape, Sexual assault, Death of parent, Gore, Domestic abuse, Animal death, Antisemitism, Suicide, and Blood

Minor: Abortion

lilaceous's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

characters - ⭐️

plot - .5⭐️

engaging to read - ⭐️

would recommend - .5⭐️

would read again - 

the family dynamics in this novel are super fun to read. the plot did meander at times, but i wasn’t disappointed by the excess of flashbacks and seemingly unnecessary plot sections because it was all interesting.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Violence, War, Gun violence, Sexual assault, and Rape

franklola's review

dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Abortion, Antisemitism, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Pedophilia, Blood, Child death, Confinement, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Rape, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, War, Alcohol, Animal death, and Violence

uhtceara's review

Plot has no sense of urgency or particular sense of direction. Just a meandering collection of story points. It is entirely possible that this ends brilliantly, but it shouldn’t take more than 400 pages to accrue momentum

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse

Moderate: Murder, Antisemitism, and Child abuse