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clem's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
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? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, and Forced institutionalization
Moderate: Pedophilia and Sexual assault
pomoevareads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
I finished one of my most anticipated books of the year last night and it did not disappoint.
Told from alternating POVs of two sisters, their mother and their grandmother of a Métis family with the last name of Stranger. Phoenix is serving a sentence in a juvenile institution and her sister begins the book in one of the foster care homes she has been in. Elsie is battling her demons and trying to fight an addiction in the middle of a town where she frequents the same people, places and things. - a recipe for an uphill battle. Margaret is estranged from her daughter and learns of a new birth in the family from her mother. All of these characters will have to have to move boulders from their way to push past what they have endured and come out whole.
The Strangers is a companion book to The Break (published in 2016). I read The Break in February of 2017 and while bits of it have stayed with me, including the experience of reading it, details have been forgotten. It is not necessary to have read The Break first but I think it adds to layers within The Strangers. I wish I had reread The Break more recently.
I am very thankful for the family tree at the beginning of the book to help me keep the multitude of characters straight. There are a couple of names that belong to two characters and thus really helped.
Themes of both connection and estrangement, intergenerational experience, trauma, loss and tradition flow through the story. The story is told over five years and includes the current pandemic within them subtly.
The characters are often set up to fail by systems. One example was the comments made by the character Elsie in the novel who talks about the requirement of a home for the system to give her her children but to get a home you need the children who are going to live there first. An impossible situation.
Motherhood and its many joys and frustrations was tackled expertly. The character of Margaret had some especially difficult views for me. It is not until later in the novel where we are told by her uncle Toby where Margaret comes from and how she is different than she appears. I cried during several scenes in this book and most of them involved children.
Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinhamishhamilton for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. The Strangers publishes September 28, 2021.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction
Minor: Sexual assault
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