Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Farming of Bones

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

4 reviews

3littlewordz's review

challenging dark emotional inspiring 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

It can be challenging to capture humanity in massacre and devastation. It can sometimes come across as macabre… too focused on the gore. Edwidge Danticat masterfully captured beauty, pain, violence, and death within a massacre in The Farming of Bones. She didn’t shy away from descriptions of violence, nor did she seem to glorify the brutality that was inflicted upon the Haitian population targeted in the 1937 Parsley Massacre. Danticat also movingly explored ache: the ache of the loss of parents and children, the ache of poverty, and the ache of dreams deferred and never realized. Through Amabelle’s eyes, we see the dichotomy between the Haves and Have Nots; those in power and those subjugated. Though this is a work of fiction, I learned so much about the Trujillo regime that I knew nothing about prior to reading this novel. In fact, I never knew that the US occupied Haiti for several decades! The Yanki occupation was also mentioned in this work, which sent me down another rabbit hole of research. This is a heavy heavy book, but I highly recommend. Another great novel about the Trujillo dictatorship is In The Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. Between these two novels, I’ve gained a much better understanding of that time period in history.

Content Warnings

balrogfemme's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

mscalls's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

strangeeigenfunction's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

I don't think I can rate this book because it's a devastating portrayal of a traumatic historical event. It's very good on a literary level, as I expect from Danticat, and I do recommend it, but understand that it's about a very heavy topic, heed the content warnings, and ideally make sure you can seek out post reading comfort.

The first third or so of the book is happier and on a more even emotional keel, and yet there are four mundane deaths in it

(I recommend reading this spoiler to prepare if you have difficulty with the more specific deaths mentioned in the content warnings:)

the main character's parents drown, a worker is run down by a car hurrying on a celebratory errand, a baby who is only a few days old stops breathing

that in many other stories could suffice for tragedy. The last third—emotionally if perhaps not in page count—is a portrait of trauma in the aftermath of the violent middle. (this perhaps most influences my rating of lovable characters, but it is less that I dislike or cannot love Amabelle and more that trauma and intense grief can make people harder to love due to the damage to their emotional wellbeing.)

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