Reviews tagging 'Fatphobia'

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

4 reviews

annahollamby's review against another edition

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slow-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

1.0

boring and incredibly unlikeable. found myself wondering so many times if the author has ever actually met and interacted with a real woman before. like genuinely. the way he talks about women and sex is gross and pathetic. yet more complex female storiess and characters lost to the male gaze and the manic pixie dream girl trope. also sincerely What The Fuck (r.e. the supposed lesbian character realising she's a lesbian because of a 13 year old 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 only for her lesbianism to be cured in the end by (you guessed it!) a penis... Fucking Gross. 
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madamdun's review against another edition

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slow-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
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mexigingerale's review against another edition

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

1.0

I went in expecting to love this book, even with the knowledge that Murakami is known for not being able to write women well at all and the books were going to be slightly misogynistic. And until the halfway point I could still see myself giving the book around 4 stars, because while the women were written badly, it was beautiful prose and interesting to read. Then there's an extremely gross, awful scene, that's just brushed of as nothing???? I'm going to write exactly what it is, but in case someone doesn't want to be spoiled, I put a spoiler warning. Though I would recommend spoiling yourself and then skipping those few pages if you really want to read the book still
a woman in her 30s tells the story of her being 'sexually assaulted' by a 13 year old girl and how much she really enjoyed it, also telling the sexual acts in detail
and then later in the book the main character ends up
having sex with that character?
which made no sense to me and ruined one of the few nice sections in the book after the halfway point.  After the halfway point the women in the book got worse and worse in the way they were written and the way the main character talked about his supposed loved Naoko was so gross to me. He mainly thinks about her body, blowjob and how she made him come after
she starts getting worse and then her suicide


I don't think any beautiful prose could make up for this. I do not understand the hype this book gets, when the women are written so awfully and with such problematic elements. And I have enjoyed works before that did have sexism and other problematic works in them, just really not this one. 
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closelywatchedfilms's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Haruki Murakami really irritates me as an author because he clearly has the ability to write beautiful, intense passages but seems to simultaneously possess a desire to make every single female reader feel as uncomfortable as possible. There were events in this book that made me visibly cringe and overall is incredibly problematic. Unfortunately, I think my time attempting to connect with Murakami is now over. 
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