Reviews tagging 'Car accident'

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty

18 reviews

rnorthie's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Check content warnings!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

mercerhanau's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

kaywhiteley's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark sad 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

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lizzie24601's review against another edition

Go to review page

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Some of the stories about David as a child are good (especially the two about Paige's pregnancies), but overall nothing very exciting.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

ohnoitscoco's review against another edition

Go to review page

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


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

anahisa's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

4.5

THE HITS KEPT COMING AND THEY NEVER STOPPED. 

A reading experience that made me feel both haunted + hunted! Love how Talty subverts horror tropes in these stories. I’m finding myself at a loss for words because it’s such an incredibly raw narrative it feels wrong to talk about in passing. While I highly recommend picking this one up, advise the trigger warnings!! 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lanid's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional sad
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

jayisreading's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

These interconnected stories were so raw yet tender. Focusing on friends and family, generational trauma, life on the reservation, and just the general pains of growing up, Talty explores these themes through David, who serves as a protagonist of sorts for each story. Each story has its pain and grief that the characters go through, but there’s always space to show love still exists, despite everything.

Talty is a phenomenal storyteller, tugging at your heartstrings during some moments due to heart wrenching loss, but then having you laughing at others. These stories resist glamor and comfort in favor of presenting everyday life as is, the realities of one Penobscot boy’s/man’s world. This isn’t to say that the writing is plain— Quite the contrary, Talty has a really wonderful way with words, especially when it comes to dialogue; you really get a sense of each character’s persona and beliefs from these conversations.

I think the one thing that threw me off a little was the jumping around in time, which, in turn, affected the pacing a little. In some instances, we’re looking at the world from David’s perspective as a boy. In others, he’s a young man. It was a little hard to get into the stories at times, as a result, but I will say that I don’t think I was in the right headspace to fully appreciate these stories.

Whatever the case, I’m looking forward to what more Talty has in store for his readers. This collection of short stories really packed a punch. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

tigger89's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

4.0

This collection is the darkest book I've read in quite some time. Themes of addiction and depression are present in most of the stories, with occasional dips into even darker territory. In addition to suggesting content warnings in general, I want to mention that cigarettes in particular are prominent. That said, (what I believe to be) the chronologically penultimate story as well as the final story have elements of hope to them, so the picture isn't entirely bleak.

Once I figured out what was going on, the non-chronological storytelling choice was genius. It takes a bit of puzzling out, but the reading experience is greatly enhanced by having to figure out where you are in time, what are the characters up to, wait a minute Paige isn't here because why? What happened!? You'll find out after several more stories, when the narrative finally gets around to it. It sounds frustrating, but due to the brevity of the stories(and the collection as a whole - it clocks in under 300 pages) it didn't bother me, because I knew I'd find out soon.

The characters featured in these stories are vividly real, but deeply flawed, individuals who make bad choices, repeatedly. Regardless, I found myself caring for them, even as I was so incredibly frustrated with their actions. This might not be everyone's cup of tea, so be aware going in that these characters are made of flaws, and it's not necessarily something that ever gets set right.

It's interesting to me that, after reading some other people's thoughts, I saw that wasn't the only one who was mistaken about the content of this collection when I picked it up. I believe it's a combination of the cover design, the title, and the way the stories were teased on the back cover, but it's funny to me that there's such a misconception that this collection features horror stories. It doesn't. On numerous occasions you may (or should) briefly be horrified, but the focus of these stories is not to evoke any kind of sustained horror. Rather, it's slice of life about family, poverty, trauma, loss, and ultimately, choosing to live.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

maceydowns's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

the book I didn’t know I was looking for but when I read it, I knew I’d found something 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings