Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

 The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

13 reviews

panoptican's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious sad slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Grief, Trafficking, Sexual assault, Racial slurs, and Colonisation

Moderate: Pregnancy and Rape

Minor: Animal cruelty

rieviolet's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective 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

3.5

This is the first Louise Erdrich's book I've read and, all in all, I liked it. It was not a bad reading experience and I'd like to try out some of her other books.

The chapters are quite short so you can get through them quickly and the book doesn't really feel as long as it is. 
There are multiple point of views and it is interesting to experience so many different voices; still, inevitably, some characters were more captivating than others to me, and the overall narrative could feel a bit disjointed. 

I really appreciated how the author constructed the characters, they were flashed out well and felt very vivid on the page.
Also, I've read very few stories about Native American communities, so I enjoyed getting a glimpse into their history and culture.

It took me a bit to tune into the writing style, and there were still some bits where I struggled a little with the language and I'm not sure I really understood what was being said (but I am not a native speaker) or what was going on.

At times it got a touch strange for my personal taste 

just to name a few examples: dogs talking, chapters from a horse's POV, mention of a horse's vulva

, or the story took quite dark and disturbing turns abruptly, leaving me a bit discombobulated.

I wasn't completely sold on the ending, I think that a lot was left unexplored and untold, which is comprehensible given that there were a lot of narrative threads, but it still left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Sexual assault, Alcoholism, Death, and Racism

Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual content, Colonisation, Death of parent, Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, Trafficking, Medical content, Kidnapping, Violence, Gun violence, and Animal cruelty

Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic, Toxic friendship, Dementia, Animal death, Sexual harassment, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Addiction, and War

bri_morgan's review against another edition

emotional informative mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Alcoholism

Moderate: Sexual assault, Death of parent, Animal cruelty, and Injury/Injury detail

booknerd_therapist's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Genocide, Sexism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Addiction, Alcoholism, Racism, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Child abuse, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, and Animal death

Minor: Deportation

cantfindmybookmark's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny informative slow-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Trafficking, Colonisation, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Addiction, Confinement, Rape, Torture, Sexual assault, and Animal cruelty

ekmook's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective 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? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Racism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Grief, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Violence, and Trafficking

Moderate: Child death, Classism, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Forced institutionalization, and Gun violence

erica_palmisano's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

Fascinating and surprising. I haven't spent a lot of time in places like North Dakota & Minnesota during the 1950s, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The story was vivid and covered some difficult realities, but also kind and grounded in the details of daily life and simple pleasures. The audio narration was straight-forwardly lovely – cadence and style were simple and it was good to hear the fragments of the Chippewa language pronounced properly too. So glad I read this and got to meet these characters!

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Content Warnings

Minor: Confinement, Animal death, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Trafficking, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Rape, Sexual harassment, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Misogyny, Ableism, Addiction, Drug use, Xenophobia, Alcoholism, and Sexual violence

spoko's review against another edition

challenging 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

3.5

There’s a lot to respect in this book, but in the end I didn’t really enjoy reading it. It felt disjointed, like it couldn’t decide what kind of book it wanted to be. I might have enjoyed the various parts of it separately, but they didn’t fit together well. Patrice’s journey to the city, especially, was a really jarring departure from the overall narrative, and I never really got back into the book after that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty and Trafficking

aridex's review against another edition

dark informative reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal cruelty

eicart_reads's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Sexual assault, Animal cruelty, Confinement, and Drug use