Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

4 reviews

indrabindra's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

Narration style in reflective memory. Intimate social interactions foreground, societal conditions and context background, revealed slowly and intensely. Brilliant & fascinating experiential read. Beware: does not give the warm and fuzzies. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gore, Infertility, Medical content, Toxic friendship, and Death

Minor: Suicide, Child abuse, and Confinement

thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful slow-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization and Medical content

Moderate: Confinement, Child abuse, and Classism

Minor: Suicide

skudiklier's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

This book was really interesting, and for once I kind of guessed some of the twists/reveals ahead of time. I kept expecting the book to get suddenly more intense or sad, and though of course it was sad, I never came close to crying. It's almost like the mystery distracted me from how sad it was. But! Overall it was written well and it's a powerful book. Not sure I'd recommend it, but I definitely don't regret reading it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, Forced institutionalization, Bullying, and Infertility

Moderate: Ableism, Cancer, Cursing, Genocide, Grief, Homophobia, Torture, Suicide, Sexual content, Slavery, Murder, and Medical trauma

Minor: Infidelity, Vomit, Terminal illness, Stalking, Sexual violence, Mental illness, and Drug use

booksthatburn's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.5

NEVER LET ME GO is a quiet and circuitous reminiscence on a life lived which slowly unfurls into descriptions of an inescapable dystopian nightmare which proceeds at the ambling pace of ordinary existence, ending with a whimper. 

As a dystopia it’s quiet, the disturbing details coming in drips and drabs with a sense that Kathy as a narrator assumes the reader knows the system already and so is only paying attention to find out what her place was in it, not to learn what it is altogether. The narrative style meanders in time in order to be mostly clear in thought. It’s not linear, sometimes frustratingly so, but it was usually easy for me to follow because each bit of information is told based on its relevance to some other piece of the past. It has the disconnected quality of a long reminiscence while being generally understandable. 

Several of the characters were pretty unlikeable. I enjoy sometimes reading something where I just hate a main character so I had a good time, but Ruth is a consistently unpleasant person for much of the book, and I wish Tommy had room to be more his own person. That said, in a story about how none of them get to be their own people in a larger sense it works really well, but if you're irritated by it early on you should know it doesn't really get better. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Bullying, Death, and Medical content

Minor: Ableism, Excrement, Homophobia, Suicide, and Violence

CW for discussion of suicide, major character death.