Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

54 reviews

ukponge's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad 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? No

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Drug use, Child death, Child abuse, and Drug abuse

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

jourdanicus's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-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? It's complicated

5.0

An incredible read. This one will have to sit with me for a while before I can think of any key takeaways. One thing that stands out to me is that the stories all felt cohesive... It felt to me that they were all told by the same narrator from different points in his life. I know they're labeled as all separate stories, but they seemed so connected which kept me engaged, especially toward the end when everything seemed to come together.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcohol, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Car accident, Child death, Addiction, and Drug use

_belty_'s review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Racism, Xenophobia, Violence, Toxic friendship, Mental illness, Drug use, Dementia, Classism, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Addiction, and Child death

annemaries_shelves's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-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

3.5

This is a really solid debut short story collection, however I didn't love it like I thought I would.

Part of it probably was my incorrect expectation that there would be speculative elements, when it was actually a contemporary setting (that incorporated Penobscot Nation worldviews). 

I really enjoyed actively reading the stories but found it easy to put down and I wasn't super motivated to pick it up every time. The writing was clear and strong and I think Talty will continue to improve and grow as a writer. My main issue with the collection is the sometimes confusing timeline. Because he opted to shuffle the order of stories out of linear time, it took a while to place each one when it was happening in our main character, David's, life. His character work was excellent, though, and even through limited third person persctive, I got a good sense of who each person in David's life was. I was rooting so much for David and his friends and family but things never really improved - frustrating but oftentimes realistic. 

Overall, I don't think this will be a collection that sticks with me strongly (it's been a few days and I'm already losing details) but I will definitely keep an eye out for future works by Talty. I think this will work for a lot of people though, and encourage readers to seek it out if contemporary short stories tackling the lives of Indigenous (Penobscot) families and young men is of interest. 

CW: The book came with a sticker for references to death, self-harm, and childhood trauma. I would also include on-page interrupted rape, drug use (especially prescription meds) and alcohol use, and infant death. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Drug abuse, and Alcohol

Moderate: Rape, Child death, and Death

Minor: Racial slurs, Mental illness, Medical content, Self harm, Violence, and Racism

mairead_parade's review against another edition

dark reflective 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

The stories tie together so well, it felt more like a novel with a non-linear chronology than a short story collection - one of the stories centers on the main character asking the question “How did we get here?” and that’s really what the whole book seeks to answer, with haunting and memorable vignettes. The audiobook narrator was lively and differentiated between the characters well.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Vomit and Drug use

Very strong content warning for the last chapter/story which graphically depicts

an infant death

and sort of comes out of nowhere.

sarah984's review against another edition

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

struedandspaetz's review against another edition

emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Wow, this was a well-crafted book!

While I was reading this book, I felt like the narrator's therapist.  At the start of this book, I thought the stories were shifting back and forth between two characters...when I got to the end and realized that it was actually the same character, I was really surprised!  

The stories were not in chronological order but the events do all circle around the narrator and his experiences growing up.  You see the past and the signs of trauma exhibited by the family members who raised him...from his grandma, his mom, and her boyfriend.  These experiences all add up and make it clear why the narrator became addicted to drugs.  

I thought that it was a powerful choice for the author to end with the story that he did.  History has laid bare that there is a lot of systemic violence enacted upon First Nations people...both in the past and continuing on with the system now that pulls apart families and is designed to make life hard for them to thrive.  This final chapter reflects what that looked like in the narrator's family.  There is no happy ending, no clear solution or way out for the family...but that's what makes this book realistic fiction and not fantasy. <spoiler/>

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, Grief, Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Drug abuse

sidneyreads_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Chronic illness, Drug use, Drug abuse, Colonisation, and Abandonment

Moderate: Vomit, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Alcoholism, and Addiction

Minor: Blood, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Child death, and Classism

caseythereader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Addiction, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Grief, Infidelity, Mental illness, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, Alcoholism, Dementia, Drug use, Murder, Racism, Sexual assault, and Violence

Moderate: Fatphobia and Ableism