Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

6 reviews

mnatale100's review

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Pregnancy, Blood, Colonisation, Child death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, War, Addiction, Genocide, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, and Violence

Moderate: Child abuse, Deportation, Death of parent, Torture, Fire/Fire injury, Police brutality, and Sexual content

Minor: Infidelity

mmefish's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

This felt like two different books with two different ideas behind them put into one; a phycological thriller and a historical novel mismatch. The concept is ambitious but I don't think the execution is strong enough. 

I don't understand the reasoning behind writing a psychopath of a character that is Zamani, can't understand why we have to follow the events of the book through his eyes, read about his thoughts, his made-up scenarios. The "revelations" of the last chapters are not revelations at all—it's easy to guess what exactly happened by much earlier in the book—and so the invention of his character makes for a weird choice (serving what purpose exactly?), keeping in mind what the other half of the novel talks about. 

And the other half is this: Zimbabwean genocide; the (separate) lives and griefs of a married couple. 

But because the book spends too much time on Zamani, all of that painful imagery, all that history kind of gets brushed aside at the end – unfinished, perfunctory, forgotten. Maybe that's exactly the point but again, the way the novel deliveres it confused me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Torture, Child abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Murder, Domestic abuse, Police brutality, Rape, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Excrement, and Pregnancy

VERY graphic rape+murder scene. Very graphic murder of a pregnant woman and the death of her fetus.

cgreenstein'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? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Recent Zimbabwean history as told through the eyes of a narrator whose increasingly predatory search for belonging serves as a metaphor for the nation and its different ethnic groups.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Rape, and Domestic abuse

quinnjuliac's review

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

3.75

I’m glad I stuck with this book although the first 1/3 of it was challenging. The narrator is very unreliable and the tale is quite meandering, but throughout the book it becomes clear what is being intentionally concealed from vs revealed to the reader. The book gave really vivid insight into the range of traumas the people of Zimbabwe have experienced over the last 50 years and how their traumas impact their relationships and families and are passed on through generations. I kind of had to resolve to stick with this book as it wasn’t clear where it was going to go for a lot of the time. In summary I’m glad I read it.  Holy content warning!! Watch out if you struggle with violence or genocide.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Police brutality, Rape, Sexual assault, Murder, Sexual violence, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Child death, Grief, Alcohol, Violence, Death, Colonisation, and Animal cruelty

2treads's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

-What are honour and duty and country except the trinity of a live, moving hearse into which we throw conquest's history-riddled bodies- Zamani
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Tshuma has created against the backdrop of a Zimbabwe emerging from the strangling coils of colonialism, a story that centres the power of history, more specifically the power of those with the skill and opportunity to control history and how it is recorded, disseminated, and presented.
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Under the thumb of duplicitous and opportunistic Zamani, a man with no knowledge of his lineage, he insinuates and ingratiates himself into Abednego's family and proceeds to hijack a history for himself. Using his proximity and apparent usefulness and extension of support to cement himself deeper into the fabric of their family, eventually hoping to usurp the place of a missing son.
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But as much as Tshuma has used a dark period in her country's history, she uses it to trace connections between family, known and unknown. The rippling and cascading effects of state-sanctioned violence, food shortages, ethnic hatred and tensions and how the very fabric of a nation was affected.
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And with the failed attempt at reconciliation and recompense of the Commission of Inquiry, one cannot help but to wonder who is really helped by these institutions who come cloaked as a saviour, when true justice has yet to be dispensed in a history of violence that has swept across so many vulnerable communities. 
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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death

Moderate: Violence, Rape, Hate crime, Drug use, Domestic abuse, and Addiction

ellekhupe's review

dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 This was an incredibly difficult book for me to read. Difficult because it was personal. It was devastating and it left me reeling. It's a story that needed to be told. It's a story that many people who, like me are from the part of Zimbabwe where this story is set, grew up hearing stories like this one, but there's something about seeing the story written down that's both powerful and heartbreaking. I didn't particularly enjoy the writing style but a MUST read if you have any interest in some of Zimbabwe's history during and shortly after independence. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Domestic abuse

Minor: Alcoholism