Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

17 reviews

munchkennina's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation

Moderate: Racism, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Child death, Death of parent, Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, Death, and Rape

Minor: Alcoholism and Cannibalism

thenextbookdilemma's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense 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? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, Physical abuse, Confinement, Child death, and Trafficking

Moderate: Body horror

Minor: Death of parent, Cannibalism, Pregnancy, and Alcoholism

zombiezami's review against another edition

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Grief, Death of parent, Religious bigotry, Physical abuse, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Child abuse, Gore, Blood, Murder, Animal death, Death, Child death, Racism, Torture, Violence, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Colonisation, Vomit, Sexual violence, Stalking, Rape, Pregnancy, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Drug use, Drug abuse, and Alcoholism

msbarnesela's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

3.75

Disclaimer: I’m not the target audience for this book. It’s YA, and it reads like YA, and I am not a teenager. I read this to determine whether I could use it with my students.

The plot moves quickly, and the chapters are short. The premise is compelling. The characters make sense, given the situation and setting. I wanted good things for them. They weren’t always likable, but they’re trying to survive while people are hunting them, and most of them are also dealing with puberty, so some prickliness is to be expected. 

I’m not a huge fan of the style of the prose. The book is from the perspective of the main character, who is a teen boy. The way his emotions and observations are narrated feels a little too exaggerated while also being weirdly self-aware. I would have enjoyed a bit more emotional subtlety and maybe just more writing craft? But again, I’m not the target audience. And I wonder if some of the storytelling techniques are echoing oral narrative techniques that I’m just not culturally connected to.

This is a book that I will use with my students. It has references to some really terrible things (see content warnings), but none of it is graphic. Violence and sex are acknowledged but not narrated, so it’s appropriate for younger high school (and maybe mature 8th graders, with adult support to contextualize and process the traumatic parts). Stylistically and structurally, it’s probably an easy enough read for middle grades. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Death, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Racism, Trafficking, Violence, Child death, Cultural appropriation, and Forced institutionalization

Minor: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Cursing, Medical content, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Pandemic/Epidemic, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Pregnancy, Rape, and Trafficking

One character alludes to being gang-raped (the lead-up and aftermath are briefly detailed, but not the rape itself). Another character is said to have been raped (no detail). Kidnapping, trafficking, medical experimentation, and murder of indigenous people are the premise of the book, so it’s to be expected that it’s referenced. Residential schools are referenced frequently, but there’s very little description of the experience of institutionalization since only one character in the book had spent any time in the schools. There is one reference to sexual arousal between two teens, but nothing happens beyond kissing, and it’s awkwardly and abruptly interrupted. Two young adult characters couple up, and the woman is mentioned to be pregnant, but it’s a passing reference. Some characters shoot people (mostly justifiable self-defense) and feel bad about it afterwards.

augustar14's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

4.75

This book is so powerful. Very well done, hard to listen at times but all important because while set in the future, many of the experiences are based on reality or historic reality for indigenous Americans. Definitely recommend, if you're in a space for something that is heavy and strong.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Abandonment, Alcohol, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Child death, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Rape, Addiction, Forced institutionalization, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Alcoholism, and Vomit

Minor: Sexism, Xenophobia, Confinement, Medical content, Cannibalism, and War

pigeonquestions's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Beautifully written. A view of “the apocalypse” entangled with history back to the first residential schools and Indigeous peoples forced from their lands, not just when the coastlines began to shrink or the Water Wars or when a dreamless plague spread over North America. Lovable characters of multiple generations in a found family that I got very attached to. Dark, hopeful, bittersweet, fast-paced. I love the way stories are interwoven into the main narrative. The story features a pair of men who are a couple and though they face adversity, homophobia is never really an issue. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Trafficking, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, Genocide, and Child death

Minor: Sexism, Alcoholism, Rape, and Medical trauma

erebus53's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

This is an award winner, no doubt. A rag-tag family of survivors journey through the wilds of Canada, evading the ever-present threat of those who would capture them and harvest their biological material. This is a story that is more about what it is to be human, than the speculative science of the future. Like many survivalist stories parts of it feel like (as one character puts it) "post-apocalyptic boy scouts" but this story is different from others in that the survivors are Indigenous North Americans, who are also trying to remember and rediscover how to live off the land, feeling the grievous loss of their language and their customs to the oppressive colonists.

spoiler alert.. ok not a spoiler at all; there are no zombies.

As the characters get to know each other and themselves better, it becomes clear that they have all suffered horrible trauma. The description of the physical sensations of trauma is real and visceral. This is the first time I have ever heard someone describe grief as living in the gut and in the backs of the knees. I have to agree (though I would say inside the knuckles also).

Although the teenagers in the group are scarred and damaged, they do have one thing that modern teens often don't and that is duty, and a feeling that they are desperately needed for the survival of their group. They have to look after the young and elderly, learn their languages to share them with future generations, and mind what the outcome of their "romances" might be. They are trained to move silently, to hunt and to track so that they don't go hungry.

Some parts of the book are magical, and based in the spiritual beliefs of Indigenous peoples. At no point is the book completely spelled out, or the rumours about the Schools where the people are detained, ever explained specifically, but I'm not upset by that. The ending is still satisfying, and the interpersonal drama is really what sells the whole experience.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, Cultural appropriation, Child death, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Animal death, Colonisation, Grief, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Cursing, and Abandonment

Minor: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Cannibalism, and Sexual assault

qtcarolyn's review against another edition

emotional hopeful fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping and Grief

Moderate: Gun violence, Blood, and Rape

Minor: Alcoholism, Child death, Alcohol, and Colonisation

booksthatburn's review

challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

THE MARROW THIEVES speculates that, given the opportunity and incentive, settlers would do what they’ve always done and steal the very dreams from the bones of Indigenous people in a last, desperate attempt to save themselves. And it won’t work. It’s not dystopian, nor apocalyptic, but five-minutes-in-the-future speculative  fiction because the necessary backstory is the real history that’s already happened. The “generic dystopia” version would include a factory tour and a lot more gore, rather than this (much better) story of a community trying to stay together. It’s wholly uninterested in gazing at the machinery of pain, but is focused on community, memory, and surviving long enough to have a chance at thriving.

The term "found family" is both accurate and inadequate for the character relationships. They're the remnants of a much larger and more complex community which was hunted, shattered, and even now is pursued. They were part of a community generally even before they found each other specifically, and now they're all they have left. Frenchie lost his parents before the novel opens, and loses his brother in the opening chapter. He finds a group of traveling Indigenous people, on the move in order to stay alive. I like Miig as a leader, he's doing his best and focusing on teaching the younger ones what they'll need to know. He and Minerva are working to pass on their culture, balancing the need to understand with the maturity of the individual children. 

A lot of the worldbuilding is conveyed though stories, either “Story” told nightly by Miig, or the characters’ “creation stories”, each person’s own history of how they came to be with the group. It lends a ponderous air to these details, where the reader’s desire to know more synchronizes with Frenchie’s hunger for any scrap of connection he can get. From the premise, I anticipated a scene in the factories, detailing the dystopia through voyeuristic gaze into the mechanisms used to cause their suffering. It doesn’t do that, thankfully, it stays focused on the characters, their journey, and their community. The physical bits of worldbuilding are in the places they pass through, the abandoned structures, and the garbage on the ground, the detritus that marks the wreckage of the world that was and the dangerous other people who also inhabit it.

I love the way the plot is unhurried. The endless travel is devoid of meaningful landmarks except for detritus. The pivotal scenes mostly hinge either on encounters with others or from stories. This changes toward the end after an encounter irrevocably changes the status quo and prompts them to change how they're running. I love the ending, it would be the best part if not for how great the rest of the book is.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping and Genocide

Moderate: Sexual assault, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, Animal death, Murder, Death, Rape, Gun violence, Cannibalism, and Child death

Minor: Drug abuse, Sexual content, Ableism, Excrement, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Drug use, Confinement, Vomit, and Death of parent

1rae1's review

challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense 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

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape, Alcoholism, Murder, Racism, Drug use, Child death, and Death