Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Fifty Words for Rain

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie

4 reviews

kktaylor11's review

dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.75

This book first caught my attention a couple of years ago when I came across the title and the first few pages in a book store. Recently, standing in B&N I saw it again and had to make a decision whether to buy it or save it for later - ultimately deciding to wait. Then I got home and discovered I had actually PURCHASED it the first time I saw it and it had been languishing in my TBR pile -- so obviously I needed to read it.

The story is unique, original, and well written. It follows the childhood and maturation of a young woman (Nori -- short for Noriko) who is the child of a disgraced Japanese princess (at least she's of royal blood) and an African American GI. As the book opens, Nori is abandoned by her mother at the gates of her Japanese grandparents' home -- and the story follows the next 17 years of her life as she fights for acknowledgement, love, belonging and identity. Her brother (same mother, Japanese father) comes to live with her at one point, she creates meaningful relationships with British expats, and she grows into her own identity - but...

There are moments that are truly beautiful - moments where Lemmie captures the beauty of Japan, the power of family, and her words have the spark of something literary -- but my biggest hiccup is that I felt some things were rushed and unclear. (Ironic to say about a book that runs 450 pages!) If you want to just experience the story - do...I certainly don't resent the time I spent reading it! If you want more details from me, here you go:

After finishing the book I've been struck by how many loose ends it has, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like it's unraveling in my hands. For example - one of the most powerful scenes in the beginning of the book is the acid bath Nori has to take daily as her grandmother tries to lighten her skin. The scene is detailed and painful and powerful in establishing the intense dislike for her grandmother so pivotal to the story. Yet it's never really mentioned again. At one point Akira mentions the baths in his promise "the beatings and baths will stop..." but that's it. Are we just supposed to forget it? On a similar note, the brothel is a powerful moment that feels like the author wanted "something terrible" but it feels forced and forgotten. Nori's friendship with Miyuki is built too quickly into "like sisters" and then torn apart and never mentioned again. Nori ends up with plenty of money living with Akira for years and never even considers trying to find Miyuki? Even when she inherits everything she closes the brothel, but makes zero mention of her friend. Similarly, the relationship with Akira is too fast and too intense - almost uncomfortable. You can have hero worship without having overtones of incest, which I think unintentionally (or maybe it was intentional) develop here. Nori is too blindly and obsessively in love with Akira, almost to the point of it being uncomfortable. It was clear something was going to happen to him from the first pages - the more he became "the air she breathed" the more you knew he was going to die. Or how about Will....he essentially rapes and sexually abuses her for over a year and then she just says "no more or I'm telling" and never seems to have to deal with any residual effects of the trauma? And the part where she goes to watch him feels pointless -- she decides to go visit Alice on her own, so why did we need the moment of Will seeing her across the room or the suggestion that he had seen her in other places or the awkward scene where he throws himself at her again? It's just not realistic? That's the bottom line for me...there were so many moments that wrenched me out of the narrative with a "Wait, what??" for me to truly love the book. And the ending? Oh.So.No. After an entire lifetime of LITERALLY wanting to kill Nori, cutting her off and threatening to kill her if she doesn't leave...suddenly Yuko wants to leave everything to her and Nori is like "well.....OK." !?!? What the heck? I mean through it all Yuko and "absent threatening grandfather" have been flat background characters -- a cheap "threat of danger" to keep the story moving, but even from the little we do have about them they effectively think Nori is subhuman and would rather all their money go to the state than to her -- so to welcome her (pregnant out of wedlock) back and solve the issue by saying "she's Akira's long lost daughter even though no one actually believes it, they accept it" -- umm....if it's that easy, why couldn't you have said that back when she first arrived? So yeah, No. That's the biggest flaw in my mind.

.
That said, I did enjoy the majority of the book, and don't resent my time reading it, so high 3 star, low 4 star?

Content Warnings

cc0906's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad 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? It's complicated

3.75

Content Warnings

martachbc's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

𝔽𝕚𝕗𝕥𝕪 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕕𝕤 𝕗𝕠𝕣 ℝ𝕒𝕚𝕟 is tough for me to review, because I didn’t hate it, but I struggled with it a lot. I actually finished it a while ago (if you can’t tell from the decidedly not-winter pic), but I’ve been marinating on it since.

Set in Japan right after WW2, Fifty Words for Rain tells the coming-of-age story of Noriko Kamiza, the biracial child of her upper-class mother and an American soldier. Her mother leaves her with her grandparents who either ignore or abuse her — until her half-brother moves in. Yet her saga doesn’t stop there: She’s sold to a geisha facility, rescued yet again by her brother (with whom she has a very weird, though not line-crossing relationship), stuck in a bizarrely abusive relationship, and periodically, Grandma shows up to tell her how much she sucks. It’s a lot.

Where I think I land on Fifty Words For Rain: the story was compelling, but I had too many complaints to love it fully.

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀 𝕃𝕚𝕜𝕖𝕕:

A diverse main character in whom you could find both inspiration and sympathy
A compelling epic spanning decades that made me not want to put it down

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀 𝔻𝕚𝕕𝕟’𝕥:

Apparently the author began writing this as a teenager… and TBH the writing was showed that at times
This could border on torture porn. Every bad thing possible happened to Nori.
As a character, Nori’s development felt stunted, then jumpy. I don’t always think she stayed true to her character.

𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕀’𝕞 ℕ𝕠𝕥 𝕊𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝔸𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕥:

The end.

Content Warnings

thevietvegan's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad 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

4.0

It is a tragically beautiful read. It’s simply pain upon pain but it’s still so hopeful despite how bleak it is. It seems so painfully unnecessary to put Nori through everything she went through. Do not read this story unless you’re ready for your heart to break multiple times.

Also trigger warnings galore. Like everything that could possibly have gone wrong went wrong. Like truly a fucking tragedy this book is.

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