Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

5 reviews

gwenswoons's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad 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

3.0

I struggled with this book a lot. I wanted and expected to love it since The Poet X was one of my favorite reads of last year and I thought Clap When You Land was really excellent too. I’m not a YA reader generally so I assumed Acevedo’s adult writing would be even more up my alley! But this took me over two weeks to finish because I just struggled to keep reaching for it and the pace felt so disjointed and slow and somehow just overall exhausting. I ended up finally having to switch formats — I love Acevedo’s voice and her reading in the two YA novels of hers was so memorable for me — and that made it possible for me to finish; I think otherwise it would have maybe taken weeks more and possibly ended as a DNF for me.

I was baffled and honestly a little upset to not love this because I think EA is such a remarkable writer and her characters and worlds are so vivid and real. I think that the constant switching of viewpoints here and the constant switching of timelines was part of it for me. Though these are  devices I actually often love, here they made the characters feel so separated and their journeys so walled off, even though their stories are so intertwined. By the time the final chapters arrived and we were at the long-awaited living wake, actually seeing the characters interact in real time for me had much the most emotional and touching writing in the book, and seeing that made me acutely aware of what I had missed elsewhere in the novel.

I guess I will also say that I left a little puzzled — and was throughout  — about the peculiar ways sexuality and very graphic writing about it played in each woman’s story and sense of identity. I am NOT averse to vivid writing about women’s sexuality, but somehow I felt like it was so emphasized and repeated in the emphasis that there was either an over-exerted point (about…women’s sexuality being normal? Or ???) or — at this rate I should probably say and/or — perhaps that there was a point about it that simply wasn’t quite effectively made by my reading. Either way there was a way in which the sex writing, like a lot of the POV devices and hyper-segmenting of the book in general, felt like it was being juxtaposed onto these many (compelling and basically quite memorable) characters; and that as such it took on a slight remove that was peculiarly not resonant with the people and the stories the book asked us to love and examine.

I don’t know — overall not like, awful by any means, but I was sad over and over again to not truly enjoy this one. I will definitely keep an eye out for more of Acevedo’s work and perhaps accept that with her I’m more a YA reader.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

celery's review

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

How many different words do you need to describe a vagina?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation

starsincline's review

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity and Death of parent

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, and Pregnancy

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, and Excrement

jmeighan's review

challenging emotional funny informative inspiring reflective 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? Yes

5.0

Acevedo tells a powerful story about family and female relationships. The female characters are the focus in this story. They are powerful and conflicted; strong and struggling; supportive and fiercely loyal. Acevedo explores what is said and unsaid between family members and offers her characters opportunities to heal the wounds of the past.

I listened to the audio version of this novel which is primary narrated by the author. Acevedo brings a performance that adds another layer of emotion with her vocal storytelling. I highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance readers edition of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and Alcohol

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders and Violence

thecriticalreader's review

emotional hopeful slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 

Review:

I enjoyed my experience reading Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo; I found the characters and their family story to be interesting and the writing to be beautiful and powerful. Acevedo unapologetically uplifts the lives and experiences of her six main characters, portraying them as flawed but ultimately sympathetic people who live ordinary live despite their supernatural abilities.

 

Despite my overall positive reception of Family Lore, I imagine that it will not be everyone’s cup of tea. For one, it goes into descriptive detail of multiple bodily functions/fluids, which will undoubtedly turn many readers off. For another, it uses a lot of sentences, phrases, and words in Spanish, so people who cannot read Spanish may find themselves annoyed at frequently having to guess at the meaning or look up the phrases. 

 

The book also uses a rather unconventional storytelling form; the different points-of-view are supposedly compiled by one character, Ona, an anthropology professor who wishes to capture her family’s lore in a book. However, it is easy to forget this, as many of the chapters feel like traditional third-person narratives told from the perspectives of the different women. On top of the switching of perspectives between six characters, the book tells the fifty or more years of family history in a non-chronological fashion. My guess is that the author does this to mimic the way family lore is passed down; that is, in piecemeal fashion from various viewpoints rather than as a singular, cohesive, narrative. The drawback to Acevedo’s approach is that it takes considerable focus on the reader’s part to keep track of a story with an already ambitious scope, which will probably frustrate some readers. While I was able to (more or less) follow the characters and the narrative, I think I did lose a bit of enjoyment and understanding from this format. I also found the anthropological aspect a little annoying, because it was never clear which parts of the story were truly from a person’s perspective and which were interpreted or fabricated by Ona to complete her book. I would have preferred a more traditional third-person narrative without Ona’s interjections, or a book that leans more heavily into the anthropological angle. 

 

I enjoyed Family Lore and think it has a lot going for it in terms of the power of its narrative, characters, and writing. That being said, I think this book will not be for everyone due to some of the choices Acevedo makes for her storytelling. 

 

The Run-Down: 

You might like Family Lore if . . . 

·      You like multi-generational family sagas

·      You enjoy or don’t mind some magical realism

·      You appreciate when authors make untraditional storytelling choices in order to best uphold the experiences of their characters and community rather than to make the reader comfortable

·      You don’t mind switching POVs and non-chronological narratives

 

You might not like Family Lore if . . .

·      You cannot read Spanish and don’t like it when books have lots of untranslated Spanish words and phrases in them

·      You dislike detailed descriptions of bodily functions and fluids

·      You have a hard time following or dislike books that switch POVs between many characters, tell their stories out of order, and follow a long timeline

·      You find it difficult to sympathize with or root for characters who are flawed and sometimes do bad things

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Excrement

Moderate: Animal death, Cursing, Drug use, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

Minor: Incest, Miscarriage, Slavery, Police brutality, Grief, Colonisation, and Classism

Graphic: Ophidiophobia, menstruation