Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Round House

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

30 reviews

sam_fielder_137's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-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

3.25

I was mostly just bored. Since the main character is telling the story as an adult lawyer who's married, when we got to the climax, I knew everything would be okay. The stakes were low. The crime happened, they knew who did it. It was about justice, but didn't dive a lot into that aspect. I think the word "breast" was in the book more times than "justice" which is saying something. It was disturbing to read about a 13 year old boy's infatuation for his aunt, and the payoff for that was much too low.

Content Warnings

emilyinherhead's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-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? No

3.5

Joe, a thirteen-year-old Native boy whose mother goes practically catatonic after being raped, sets out to help his father solve the mystery of her attack and seek justice. This is not at all an easy book to read, but it sheds important light on the intricacies and injustices of actual laws surrounding the prosecution of rapes on Native American reservation lands.

The story has a slowness to it, with Joe’s days often filled with nothing besides working at the local gas station and ogling his uncle’s girlfriend’s boobs, or riding bikes with his friends and getting drunk on beers in a field somewhere. But underneath that is a sinister tension that slowly builds toward a moment of vengeance, and then the hollow grief that follows what was arguably inevitable and just.

I didn’t necessarily enjoy this book, but I can see why it won the National Book Award and I’ll be sitting with it and thinking about it for a while to come.

Content Warnings

a_m_c's review

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

readswithcocktails's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark funny sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Not my favorite Erdrich, but still really good. I liked the voice of Joe as the narrator, although sometimes it was hard seeing things as an adult that he just couldn't piece together as a 13 year old kid (although that's probably evidence that it's well written). As other reviewers have said, this is much more a coming of age story and a story about how violence committed against one family member can affect every member of the family, rather than a mystery.

Content Warnings

sofipitch's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.75

This book is one of those that will have you staring at the wall when you finish. I was actually driving when the audiobook ended and I just sat in silence. Also while this book is very bleak one thing that shines is the relationships between the characters and that makes life worth living

Content Warnings

bailorg's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

katsbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional 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

4.5

“Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.”

“We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.”

This was a very intense read. Definitely check trigger warnings for this book. It started a little slow for me but really picked up as it went. Generally, I like to listen to general fiction because I find it doesn't hold my attention the way romance, fantasy or thrillers. That's how I started this novel but found it fairly easy to finish it physically. My main complaint is that I didn't like that there weren't any quotation marks. I get that it's a literature choice but I don't really get it. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot that I didn't like about this book. My favorite aspect was probably the perspective. It was so effective to make the main character's perspective that of a 13-year-old boy. It took all of the serious, intense themes and filtered them through the semi-innocent eyes of a pubescent boy. It genuinely made so much of the story more impactful. I also really appreciated the commentary on how Native Americans straddle the line between tribal soveriegnty and American jurisdiction, especially when it comes to things like rape cases or crime perpretrated by white people on reservations. It was also really interesting to read a depiction of reservation life.

Content Warnings