Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Terminal Boredom

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

15 reviews

leahrosereads's review

dark reflective medium-paced

3.75

This was an incredibly bleak, hard to read collection of dystopian sci-fi made that much more heartbreaking knowing how the author's story ended.

The stories were introspective and sparked conversations or commentary around mental health, gender identity, and internal struggles with being perceived.

While each story was written in the 80s or earlier, there's a modern lens around a lot of the topics, especially mental health stigmatization.

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annadirknowitzki's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

2.5

Older science fiction ends up feeling so strongly rooted in the time it was written. I didn’t love this. It was readable, with some compelling premises, but far, far too bleak for my taste, and maybe with a cultural context that made it harder for it to land. Despondency is the thread connecting every story.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A really interesting collection of bleak, prescient sci-fi stories. Aside from the pop culture references it's hard to believe they were written around the 1970s. Overall 4 stars, but I knocked it down to 3 because I really hated the first story.

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courto875's review against another edition

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dark funny slow-paced

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

4.25

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livsliterarynook's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

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islesbiyana's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.5

Women and Women — 1 / 5

“And they even had the audacity to claim that this, this was the greatest characteristic of mankind – this zealous pursuit of adventure, romance, all things that were utterly useless in everyday life.”

You May Dream — 3.5 / 5

“Whatever the situation, nothing ever reaches me on an emotional level. Nothing’s important. Because I won’t let it be. I operate on mood alone. No regrets, no looking back. Before me, the world stretches out flat, smooth and featureless. Gentle and inconstant.”

Night Picnic — 2 / 5

“They held themselves and their children to impossible ideals. Their pursuit of the history of their ancestors, too, was a function of their desire for peace of mind.”

The Old Seaside Club — 1.75 / 5

“And now, he’s merely watching himself drift on – watching, wholly numbed, and without emotion. I doubt he could even muster the energy to try and understand anyone else. In that head of his, there probably isn’t much difference between me and his old guitar. And he isn’t trying to hurt anyone – no, not at all. He’s just … checked out.”

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes — 2.5 / 5

“A wonderful moment – the joy of knowing that my own creation and the creation of the universe are intimately connected. The certainty that the present was predetermined. Yes, that’s it. We will return millions of times over. Life might merely be a momentary bolt of lightning in the dark, after which the self melts into the infinite darkness. But it means that we will continue forever without interruption. I was filled with a baseless delight. Time flowed even slower. It was taking on a sense of eternity.”

Forgotten — 1. 75 / 5

“The world around them went on moving, regardless of their desires or their feelings, like a huge river. Its surface might appear calm, but charging along its bottom was a fast, powerful current, exerting a silent pressure on them. Emma was enveloped in a feeling of unbearable loneliness.”

Terminal Boredom — 3 / 5

“Hell is keeping a low profile these days, and the whole country is under the spell of this image of Heaven. The difference, though, is that with Hell at least you know what you’re getting. But with Heaven, everything’s ambiguous. There are no actively good feelings, just a passive, ambiguous contentment.”

Overall Rating — 2.75 stars ★★☆☆☆
TW/CWS: — sexism/misogyny, implied rape, depression & mental health in general, transmisogyny & transmasculinity, prejudice against masc./butch women, mentioned suicide, multiple murders

Grim. Dreadful. Bleak.

lzumi Suzuki drifts between peculiar worlds—from the saturnine, to the intimate—with a parity of dream-like numbness befogging over each tale. From start to finish, Terminal Boredom unceremoniously lives up to its title, and not just because of what looms within the atmosphere.

A premise that tackles life's ennui featured through alternate settings is severely dependent on how the author is able to lull the reader into it. Terminal Boredom suffers from dull writing—and not in a way where it meshes perfectly and accurately with the ambience, unfortunately, no. In the midst of ennui, there lies absurd and morbid comedy that doesn't quite land. Repetition in dialogue to put emphasis can work at times, but here, it overstayed its welcome. It was a tire to witness the exact same point get rinsed and repeated in the exact same tone, diminishing its effectiveness into indistinguishable meandering.

Despite Suzuki's gallery of distinct-on-paper worlds, each one of them felt empty—devoid of immersion. Attractive and mystic concepts on the first look, but upon close inspection, they're utterly devoid of the substance, the merits, that you'd expect from the craft. Admittedly, multiple passages did manage to put my own core emotions and beliefs into the proper, bittersweet words. However, the inconsistency, painfully dry execution, and the questionable backtrack to the mediocrity overweigh the values, the occasional silver linings, whose impact probably wouldn't work for everyone.

And, lastly, this is simply a gripe from a transgender and gender non-conforming reader, but I must admit that the concepts shown in the first story… didn't sit quite well with me. The women throughout the book have mostly expressed resistance towards patriarchal standards/roles and cisheteronormativity, which I do admire. I do have to applaud Suzuki's forwardness when it comes to discussing these topics, which I don't doubt might've lured misogynistic backlash at the time. However, the disdain Women and Women's protagonist has towards women who exhibit physical and/or behavioral attributes that are masculine, simply because they are "mostly practiced by men" is distasteful at best, anti-transmasculine at worst. That sort of viewpoint is one of my biggest concerns upon consuming feminist writings, especially when they're older and written through cisgender lens. I absolutely do not apply the character's prejudice with the late author's own beliefs, whatever they may have been. I simply feel the need to point out that the book's feminism loses a bit of credibility due to that. I had wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt at first—chalked up its unchallenged inclusion to it being purposeful to the overall critique—, but the assurance that theory provided eventually dwindled as I skimmed through the preceding stories. I can't help but be left confused over the protagonist's ability to criticize absurd patriarchal roles (ex.: upholding dynamics such as husband/wife or mother/father), yet she turns her nose up at the sight of women with facial hair or ones who appear more masculine by taking male hormones.

While I do think that the core themes within this anthology have so much value that are still important to discuss today, I personally believe that there are alternate Japanese books that handle them (or, the manner of how they are conceptualized at least) with more grace and nuances that can be considered over this one. Perhaps it fared better during its time period. Perhaps the original text still manages to leave an effective and refreshing take on radical ideologies, especially for Japanese readers. Either way, to me, Terminal Boredom has been a bleak collection of dystopian tales centered on feminism and mental health that felt like a half-empty glass of plain, tasteless tap water: unsatisfactory and sparse disposition with only the knowledge of its renowned essentials keeping you from wasting it.

Content Warnings

goldenjunegem's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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dsapho's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.5

I was a bit disappointed by this short story collection. The world building was enjoyable in each of stories but I didn't much like any of the characters. All the main characters seem to share an intense apathy about the world and other people, that never seems to resolve or change. They all seem to be in the midst of a deep depression, but you don't get to see them come out of it.

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ashleybeereads's review against another edition

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DNF because I only wanted to read a couple of the stories. I read Terminal Boredom and the beginning of You May Dream. Super weird, in a good way. I might come back to this one to read the other stories another time.

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morebedsidebooks's review against another edition

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3.0

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