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songbird_28's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
i might never feel happy again that was traumatic
bexrswan's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
queenzoomia1's review against another edition
5.0
How does one describe a book so beautiful that it blurs the borders of reality and fiction.
Some of the lines felt like they were from my own movie.
"I'm not a monster, I am a that a mother."
To be a monster
is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning"
I remember crying so hard as I read that line, econmpassing the emotions I feel towards mothers, using beating as a means of bettering their children's lives.
I didn't know a book about a son writing a letter to his illiterate mother would resonate with me this much. His failure to communicate with his own blood and flesh mirroring my own.
"It's in these moments, next to you, that I envy words for doing what we can never do - how they can tell all of themselves simply by standing still, simply by being."
This book is about a little dog as he narrates his life with his ma and grandmother in a pile of memories. It's about love, language, war, death, and survival.
The analogies author uses to describe situations and feelings are so gorgeous that they make you want to pluck your eyes.
Migration can be triggered by the angle of sunlight, indicating a change in the season, temperature, plant life, and food supply. Female monarchs lay eggs along the route. Every history has more than one thread. Each thread a story of division. The journey takes four thousand eight hundred and thirty miles, more than the length of this country. The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past."
The writing is what sealed the deal for me with this book. They are soo many heart wrenching stories out there, more or the same as little dog's but they don't pierce the heart like this one because the author writes like he is the words themselves and so each and every line, word is quotable.
"It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus— that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying with our entire curved and silenced selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?
"Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period?"
"Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war."
As someone from a war torn, country this line just hits the lacrimal glands so hard.
"When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?"
"I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can’t, at last, teach me how to touch my dead"
On a less devastating note;
"I know you believe in reincarnation. I don't know if I do but I hope it's real. Because then maybe you'll come back here next time around. Maybe you'll be a girl and maybe your name will be Rose again, and you'll have a room full of books with parents who will read you bedtime stories in a country not touched by war."
" Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it
With that, I say to anyone who finds this review, read this book if anything for the emotions left without words.
"I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly"
Some of the lines felt like they were from my own movie.
"I'm not a monster, I am a that a mother."
To be a monster
is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning"
I remember crying so hard as I read that line, econmpassing the emotions I feel towards mothers, using beating as a means of bettering their children's lives.
I didn't know a book about a son writing a letter to his illiterate mother would resonate with me this much. His failure to communicate with his own blood and flesh mirroring my own.
"It's in these moments, next to you, that I envy words for doing what we can never do - how they can tell all of themselves simply by standing still, simply by being."
This book is about a little dog as he narrates his life with his ma and grandmother in a pile of memories. It's about love, language, war, death, and survival.
The analogies author uses to describe situations and feelings are so gorgeous that they make you want to pluck your eyes.
Migration can be triggered by the angle of sunlight, indicating a change in the season, temperature, plant life, and food supply. Female monarchs lay eggs along the route. Every history has more than one thread. Each thread a story of division. The journey takes four thousand eight hundred and thirty miles, more than the length of this country. The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past."
The writing is what sealed the deal for me with this book. They are soo many heart wrenching stories out there, more or the same as little dog's but they don't pierce the heart like this one because the author writes like he is the words themselves and so each and every line, word is quotable.
"It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus— that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying with our entire curved and silenced selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?
"Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period?"
"Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war."
As someone from a war torn, country this line just hits the lacrimal glands so hard.
"When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?"
"I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can’t, at last, teach me how to touch my dead"
On a less devastating note;
"I know you believe in reincarnation. I don't know if I do but I hope it's real. Because then maybe you'll come back here next time around. Maybe you'll be a girl and maybe your name will be Rose again, and you'll have a room full of books with parents who will read you bedtime stories in a country not touched by war."
" Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it
With that, I say to anyone who finds this review, read this book if anything for the emotions left without words.
"I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly"
louiselindqvist's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
deyanarod's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
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
3.0
joshgroven's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-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
4.0
sophia_graber's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
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? No
4.5
Really enjoyed the book, though i might like to read it again, as the audiobook was sometimes hard to follow when the context or chapter changed. I don’t think i fully understood it all.
josiemeyer's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Chronic illness, Grief, Death, Death of parent, Racism, Addiction, Alcohol, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Drug use, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Cancer, and War