Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

40 reviews

informative slow-paced

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challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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informative mysterious tense medium-paced

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emotional funny reflective slow-paced

I really appreciated the writing style and the slow rambling way the author led us through the city and the story. 

I found the murder that centers a large part of the story incidental to me. I liked to read the book a chapter at a time, just little vignettes. 

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anna_hepworth's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 27%

So, I was not entirely sure that this book was for me at the outset, when it was labelled 'a non-fiction novel', or some other malarkey. What I wasn't expecting was that the narrative voice would dislike all the characters, and yet not pass judgment on racism, dubious use of nazi paraphenalia / memorabilia (and yes, it was called memorabilia, and I should have stopped at that point), or the ongoing destruction caused by a conman. 

I could put up with the rambling narrative, with each chapter only loosely linked to the others. I probably could have dealt with the range of shady characters. I could accept the implied level of self-loathing of the narrator, even if it made me decidedly uncomfortable. 

But the ongoing racism was starting to wear, and the introduction of Chablis, who is both Black and trans was the point that I was asking myself why I was reading this. Up to a point, Chablis was entirely plausible. But referring to their cis female friend as a 'real girl' and then presenting attitudes to Black men as angry and violent made me realise that I had no desire to be reading this story, and 'realism' (or whatever the descriptor was) be damned, this book wasn't worth reading. 

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dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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dark informative mysterious medium-paced

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