Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

The Great Circle Literary Sagas by Maggie Shipstead

5 reviews

hayleyvem's review against another edition

adventurous inspiring reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Gun violence, Addiction, Emotional abuse, Grief, Mental illness, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Pedophilia, Violence, War, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Rape, Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Death of parent, Abandonment, and Pregnancy

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, and Suicidal thoughts

tangleroot_eli's review against another edition

I need to put an indefinite pause on reading non-genre adult fiction by mainstream authors from mainstream publishers. Even the most reputedly "groundbreaking" among them have a resigned conventionality that just... exhausts me, and much of their so-called novelty is authors retreading old ground while trying to one-up each other in how "edgy" they can be.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Emotional abuse, and Sexism

Moderate: Xenophobia, Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Death, Incest, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Minor: Infidelity, War, Drug use, and Fire/Fire injury

Postpartum depression

toothpastefairy's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

Screaming, crying, and throwing-up throughout. 

Marian is someone who you desperately want to hug and throttle at the same time. Devastating and heartwarming, the novel's end is poignantly built in a way you could not predict from the start. Each character is crafted with care and depth, their lives reach across the pages to brush each other and arrest the reader's heart. 

Overall, brutal and tender.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual violence, Grief, Emotional abuse, Addiction, Abortion, Violence, Drug abuse, Death of parent, Cursing, Rape, War, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, Classism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Sexism, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Sexual content, Death, Alcoholism, Sexual harassment, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, and Gun violence

vikkom's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

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

5.0

This piece of fiction HITS on so many levels once it's finished. Judging by my engagement at the start I was definitely not expecting how many moments throughout that I would read a sentence and just sit there and stare and ponder, or bookmark to write down once I get up after keeping on reading. 

I thought this book was going to be about this random lady Marian Graves attempting a north-south circumnavigation, and the fictional actress Hadley being fascinated and throwing herself into the history of Marian in preparation for the role. The book is about that, but I'd say that it's only about 10% that. 

The rest of the book is about Marian Graves, and the people she loved and loved her, from before birth, to death; it is about Hadley, the starlet, and her journey with the pressures of hollywood, acting, falling in lust, and being... drawn to Marian and also knowing and feeling uncomfortable with the fact that the Marian she is playing is almost entirely reconstructed. 

This book paints the sweeping arc of Marian's life, and the lives of the people that were most important to her. It deals with feeling multiple, contradictory feelings at once; it deals with estrangement from people you love; it deals with loving people and yet hating them; it deals with queer love in the 40s and 50s; it deals with the what-could-have-beens while acknowledging that sequences of events have a certain inevitability and circularity; and overall, it deals with the messy and complex and less-than-idyllic ways that humans connect. Lives are lived, opportunities are lost. People die. We go on.

N.B. one thing I would say though, is that it took me over half of the book (no small feat, it's a solid 300 pages) to actually get *into* the story. I think mainly because I wasn't expecting a grand sweeping whole-of-life tale, but the book comes around in a nice circle, once I realised that was what it was. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and War

Moderate: Suicide, Blood, Drug use, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, and Hate crime

Minor: Abortion and Child death

prettycloud's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I kept catching myself wanting a movie of this book, even though I know book-movies are often disappointing, and indeed the book itself shows how much movies can miss. But this book is so visually beautiful, a delight for the mind's eye that draws from perspective characters' longings and aesthetic sensibilities to set its scenes. Though it is a long book, I never felt weighed down—when the plot doesn't move forward, the characters do, and this book is much about people's relationships to themselves and each other as it is about Graves attempting her "great circle." I liked the meditations on disappearance and death, on people's purpose in life and the interactions of chance and fate. This book has so much life in it, so much energy and realness and joy. And yet it also explores the legendary, and there is a pervading larger-than-life feeling even as we read about Marian's day-to-day life. It will be a while before I finish processing this one, because the questions it asks are woven so neatly into the story itself, but they're there. I guess, bottom-line, if you find yourself spending too long reading the Wikipedia articles of celebrities, this book might be for you.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Suicidal thoughts, War, Child abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Violence, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Death of parent, Dementia, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Vomit, Abortion, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Murder, Pregnancy, Stalking, and Terminal illness

Minor: Animal cruelty, Biphobia, Child death, Body shaming, and Fire/Fire injury

About the adult/minor relationship:

There's a pretty extensive section where Marian is a teenager in a relationship with a gangster in his late twenties and early thirties. She loves and desires him, but he stalks, extorts, and rapes her as he becomes more desperate to make her into the woman he wants.

The main themes of the book have to do with death and grief, so that and suicide by extension are very present throughout the book, though the deaths that happen are seldom described in great detail.