Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - At Night All Blood is Black

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

29 reviews

amselot's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

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chichio's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

“God’s truth, that’s how things go, that’s how the world is: each thing is double.”

Jesus Christ. This was such a searing experience. I couldn’t put the book down…I literally read it all in one sitting.

This book takes on large themes despite it being such a quick read. In this narrative, Diop speaks on race, war, toxic masculinity, and the way these three things aggravate one another, coming together to create a complex discussion on humanity, and the loss thereof.

It’s a dark, unbelievably bleak read, yet it’s still poetic and beautifully literary—I found myself highlighting a lot of lines. The character voice in this is so strong and disturbing; Diop drags you into the mind of our protagonist, Alfa, and forces you to accompany him during his descent into madness. In the latter half of the book, as Alfa grows narcissistic, you begin to sense that he’s not just an unreliable narrator, but also an unbelievably unlikeable one, worn down into something ugly by grief and guilt.

The prose is filled with repetition. Repetition of phrases, themes, and metaphors, but it works. It works. They perfectly highlight Alfa’s mental state, and the nonlinear narrative confuses you and forces you to keep up with him as his mind bounces between the past and the present, reality and delusion.

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hannahdavey's review against another edition

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dark reflective 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? Yes

4.0

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innastholiel's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.5

I’m a little torn about this one, to be honest. I really enjoyed the writing, it’s very compelling (God’s truth, repetitive though it is). But what I don’t enjoy is the weirdly objectifying sexual imagery. Like, I get it, the trench is your home and because your mommy left when you were a kid you think of it as a womb, so you think of its entrance as a vagina, but still. It’s weird without really making a point. I really would like to pretend that there is a legitimate reason for including this imagery that I’m too dumb to understand because I’m not a literary academic, and I want to pretend that this isn’t just — to bring my own gratuitous sexual metaphor into it — society having a boner for objectifying women and seeing them suffering. Of course both of those things could be true, but if it’s only one of them, I think we all know which one is the more likely candidate.

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