Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld

131 reviews

actualresultsmayvary's review against another edition

challenging dark sad medium-paced

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

3.5

Historic
Rating and review from notebook
 

- Place in history is weird and hard to remember
- Very honest exploration of children's sexualities 
- Narration feels genuinely childlike rather than childish
- Unreliable narrator 
- Confusing time jumps
- Sad ambiguous ending with lots of unanswered questions
- Traumatic and disturbed but in a way that felt authentic and relatable

 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Incest, Sexual violence, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Gore, and Suicide

Minor: Death and Adult/minor relationship

livvie_g's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

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

3.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Incest, Excrement, Animal cruelty, and Animal death

Moderate: Pedophilia and Adult/minor relationship

oftheolivetree's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

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

1.0

The Discomfort of Evening touches on grief and the way families fall apart in a unique way. Jas, the main character, exemplifies how anxiety and obsessive tendencies develop following the experience of severe trauma, and how children often feel the need to be the glue that keeps their dying families together in the wake of tragedy. That being said, this book uses incredible violence, molestation, and incest, among other things, as shock value and excitement for readers who clearly have never experienced these things. Sexual abuse is romanticized heavily in this book and is described in heavy detail literally for no reason other than to shock the reader. Child molestation, incest, abuse, etc. adds nothing to the book and just feels like a perverse fantasy for creepy readers to get off to. It’s all discussed in such specific detail too. None of that needed to be in this book whatsoever, and it’s clear that this book is not for survivors in any way, especially with how the author writes children literally enjoying being molested. All of these things are in here just to be taboo. It is not a discussion of sexual trauma or violence in any regard. It romanticizes sexual violence and abuse. Don’t read this. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Pedophilia, Suicide, Violence, Suicide attempt, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Excrement, Incest, Sexual assault, Antisemitism, Blood, Rape, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Torture

Don’t fucking read this, my god.

teagangrace's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Incest, and Sexual content

paltrindome's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

3.25

“We find ourselves in loss and we are who we are - vulnerable beings, like stripped starling chicks that fall naked from their nests and hope they'll be picked up again.” 

 

On a rural farm in the wintry Netherlands lives a family of six — ten-year-old Jas, her parents, and three siblings — defined by their unwavering faith in God and the simple agricultural life they have resigned themselves to. When the eldest son Matthies dies while ice skating, the family’s deceptively mundane and normal lives are shaken up as they suffer blow after blow compounding their dysfunctional relationships. At its core, The Discomfort of Evening is about grief, specifically the grief and trauma that haunt the family grappling with Matthies’ death, the foot-and-mouth disease that strikes their farm, and a seemingly unrelenting God they continue to worship. Jas’s mum retreats into herself and gradually stops eating; her dad becomes increasingly violent and distant from his wife; her sister Hanna acts out; her brother Obbe grows to torture animals. But the most afflicted by Matthies’ death is Jas. 

 

This is where the novel shines. Jas, convinced she is to blame for her brother’s death, dons a red coat and for the rest of the novel, refuses to take it off. Rijneveld never explicitly states why she does so but that is intentional. Her coat shields her from thoughts of her brother’s death (however futile it may be) and like how she is swallowed up by the increasingly dirty jacket, she is soon trapped in her own thoughts, obsessed with a search for an answer that was never there to begin with. 

 

“ ‘One day I’d like to go to myself,’ I say quietly, pushing the pin into the soft flesh of my navel. I bite my lip so as not to make a sound, and a trickle of blood runs down to the elastic of my pants and soaks into the fabric.” 

 

Jas’ despair manifests in her heightened desire to leave her community with Hanna, her souring friendship with Belle, and her weird childlike fixation on Jews hiding in her basement from Nazis. In Rijenveld’s novel, however, trauma is more complex, more ambiguous, and perhaps more unusually focused on the disquieting symptoms of grief. There are some genuinely subversive and sexual scenes in the novel, made only more unsettling when you remember Jas is ten years old.

In two separate incestuous incidents, Jas, Obbe, and Hanna explore their bodies together and Obbe’s cruelty towards animals translates into violence against his sisters. In another, Jas watches Obbe insert an artificial insemination kit for cows into Belle, captured in detail through Rijneveld’s writing.

 

However, the explorations of sexuality and violence are not necessarily gratuitous — the scenes serve as Rijneveld’s comment that grief can be repulsive, something that simply cannot be categorised as sadness or anguish. Nevertheless, Rijneveld also depicts the more conventional nature of grief.

By the end of Act 2, the family’s cows are slated to be slaughtered due to the foot-and-mouth disease, and Jas’ father and Obbe display more emotion here than at the loss of Matthies. Her father’s bottled emotions spill over, leading to an outburst where he protests the killings with bible verses.

 

However, the pacing of the first two acts was undermined by the novel’s final act, which lulled in places and writhed slowly towards the ending. After the “climax” of the slaughtered cows, there wasn’t anything particularly notable in Act 3. Trauma that had already been well established was examined again and near the last twenty pages, I was left wondering how Rijneveld would conclude the novel.

Jas’s suicide is a very tragic but natural way to end the novel, but the scene where she decided to do so felt so rushed and ruined what could have been a dreadful scene to behold. That may be the point — that there isn’t a specific breaking point for Jas — but the way it was written left me with a sense of “Oh, that’s it?” instead of a looming fear of her death.

The third act thus felt, at best, unnecessary, or at worst, contrived to the point that it tarnished the well-crafted exploration of intergenerational religious trauma. 

 

This isn’t to say I regretted reading The Discomfort of Evening. I just wish the ending struck as much of a chord in me as the first 100 pages did. Months after reading this novel, I still have conflicting feelings towards the novel. Grief is rarely so simple, but perhaps it’s best captured in Rijneveld’s own words: 

 

“Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go." 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Child abuse, Incest, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Self harm, Animal death, and Death

Minor: Suicide

meaghanelizabook's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-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? Yes

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Eating disorder, Grief, Sexual content, Suicide, Death, Excrement, Mental illness, Animal cruelty, Child death, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Suicide attempt, Violence, Vomit, Cursing, Incest, Toxic friendship, Blood, Body horror, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and Sexual harassment

rosalind's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Grief, Xenophobia, Animal death, Child death, Excrement, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

Moderate: Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Body horror, Incest, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Death of parent

gabb_reads's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

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

2.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Self harm, Pedophilia, Incest, Grief, Excrement, Death, and Antisemitism

courtney23's review against another edition

dark reflective sad medium-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? Yes

1.5

I think a lot of my dissatisfaction with this book is due to the translation - it was quite clunky. However, there is also a lot of graphic sexual violence that I thought was over the top. Definitely read content warnings before starting this book.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Suicide

Moderate: Child abuse and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Self harm

kcorione's review against another edition

challenging emotional 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? Yes

4.5

Ik zou het boek aanraden als je graag erg veel details leest of perfecte omschrijvingen van mensen en persoonlijkheden, maar ik zou er ook bij vermelden dat er echt degoutante en misselijkmakende gebeurtenissen in staan. Not for the light hearted!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Animal death, Death, Self harm, Suicide, Animal cruelty, Mental illness, Grief, Incest, and Suicidal thoughts