Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Arr

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Arr by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

18 reviews

abbie_'s review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Hotel Silence, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon, is the story of a man all but ready to give up on life. There are content warnings for suicide/suicidal thoughts throughout this book. Jonás decides to go to some unnamed, far-flung, war-torn country to put an end to his life far from what remains of his family. While there, he gets sucked into the community as his handyman status at the ramshackle hotel he stays at brings other folks to his door for help. It sounds bleak, but there is some warmth and humour to it, and some hope. I didn’t connect with it as much as I hoped; the prose was quite sparse, which I do often enjoy, but I felt quite emotionally detached.

That could just be down to my frame of mind though, I wouldn’t NOT recommend it - wow I’m really selling this 😂 I did much prefer Miss Iceland. I’m just gonna stop writing now!

Content Warnings

michmoo's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

leonors's review against another edition

Go to review page

hopeful reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

Short and delicate. Mostly. I’m not sure what to think about the author’s approach to a difficult theme such as suicidal thoughts. On one hand, based on the way she depicts him, I don’t think Jonas really wanted to die. From the very beginning he keeps looking for flaws to fix in his suicidal plan, first the choice of weapon, then the problem of his daughter finding his corpse; then he chooses a country where the war is over, which means, despite what he says about it, that he won’t be at risk of being shot at any second. In this sense, he strikes me more as a man who at some level is still looking for sense and meaning, than one ready to give up.
Only putting things in this perspective I can consider acceptable how the author made the protagonist diminish his own unhappiness, by comparing it to what war survivors have been through and making him define it “an idiocy at best”. That’d otherwise be a shallow and ignorant view on mental illness, since plenty of studies show that psychological symptoms are the same regardless of how big the trauma has been. Unhappiness and suicidal thoughts aren’t a competition, and claiming the contrary is stupid and patronizing.

That being said, this can still be a nice story of a new beginning and of unexpected ways to find meaning in life when one’s going through a crisis.

Content Warnings