Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

5 reviews

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

achay91's review

emotional slow-paced

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

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Infertility, Animal death, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Religious bigotry, and Sexual content

Moderate: Infidelity, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, and Sexual assault

Minor: Alcoholism, Death, Death of parent, and Grief

thewoodlandbookshelf's review

emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Infertility, Animal death, Death, Religious bigotry, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Sexual content, and Miscarriage

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

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

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

Graphic: Ophidiophobia, menstruation

conspystery's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense 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

4.0

Thanks so much to Netgalley, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Ecco for allowing me to honestly review this book in exchange for an ARC!

Family Lore is sprawlingly, interconnectedly vibrant. The characters’ relationships with one another draw them together as a family, but it isn’t that simple-- we get to see how they interweave with each other in every way possible, examining the full scale of their lives to dive into the complexity between them. The many vignettes of the characters’ childhoods and adolescents always felt fresh, like we as the audience were being offered new insight into why the present-day characters act as they do. The heavy topics addressed were done so with authenticity and grace; the magical realism, while at times a bit contrived, mostly added tension exactly where it needed to go to emphasize the heavier elements of the plot.

I found Flor to be the most compelling character, which makes sense-- she’s the animating issue for the plot. I liked her amount of provenance over the story. Her impending doom never felt overbearing, rather like an inevitable conclusion, and served as the perfect vector to contextualize all the vignettes; in the face of the upcoming death of a loved one, of course everyone would be inclined to reminisce. Every time Flor showed up in a section of the story that wasn’t hers, she served as both a familiar waystation and also a reminder of the tension building as the book went on. Ona’s project of recording all the stories feels like the natural progression of that idea, and I think it was executed really well. I also particularly enjoyed Yadi’s sections and Matilde’s sections. Pastora’s were great, too. I didn’t completely connect with Ona’s sections, but I felt that they held the narrative together in a reasonable manner.

I did struggle with a few parts of the book. I didn’t enjoy the graphic sexual content; I also felt that at times, the pacing dragged, but since this book is so character-driven, that kind of comes with the territory. Some of the dialogue, especially in the interviews, felt stilted, but that might’ve been a direct commentary on the fact that the interviews were translated-- the authenticity of the original language wouldn’t necessarily hold up in English, or with Ona translating? In that same vein, the density of content kind of dragged the pace down a bit, not always in a way that felt like richness; just a little more condensing could’ve made the pacing run a bit more smoothly, I think. Also, certain parts of the plot sprawl felt a little bit indistinct. Specifically, some of the struggles with lovers started to feel a tiny bit repetitive, but maybe that’s intentional, to see how differently the members of the main cast respond in those situations? 

Ultimately, I enjoyed Family Lore, despite those minor issues. It was poignant in the way that celebrations of life are, wistfully bittersweet. The writing was evocative and gave authentic voice to the struggles and heavy subject matter with which the book deals; the characters were multifaceted and genuine, and the plot’s calls for magical realism accented them with just the right amount of detail. I liked it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Violence, Blood, Child abuse, Animal death, and Sexual content