Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho

4 reviews

coolbitch's review

dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Emotional abuse, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Violence, Grief, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Physical abuse

rosalind's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Violence, Child death, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Medical content, and Emotional abuse

introvertinterrupted's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Sexism and Violence

Minor: Infertility

clarafoster's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

Most often, finishing a really great book leaves you with a sense of deep satisfaction; a good book with pleasure but slight relief at having powered through those last 15 pages. Occasionally a book will leave you with a deep wave of sadness, because upon finishing it you know that you may not come across a book so exquisitely crafted for several more years. This was one such book.

Cho's Inferno reads like the very best kind of literary fiction, made all the more extraordinary for the fact that it's real. The memoir starts inside a psych ward,  language stark and methodical, and then shimmers into something rich and resonant as she pieces together different bits of timeline that brought her to where she is now, life and legend overlapping and fusing in ways that shouldn't work but do. [Shoutout, at this point, to whomever made the creative decision to leave chapter headings blank and a fair chunk of pages unnumbered--making the experience of reading look and feel as much like a puzzle as the content itself]. Cho weaves Korean legends, history, and cultural mores throughout the narrative, entwining them expertly with literary references from the western canon and Greek mythology, whilst never losing sight of the (at times terrifyingly) real life she has led or her expert insight into the precise mannerisms and outlooks of those around her. It's a difficult story, but ultimately it's a hopeful and a human one too.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Mental illness, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror

Minor: Child abuse