Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Obit by Victoria Chang

4 reviews

atreegrowsinbooks's review

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Wow these poems gave me words to the grief I’ve felt after losing my grandmother. A powerful collection in a unique form. Having each poem be an obituary to something that was lost, has died, is eye opening and heart wrenching all the same. Many many lines, many poems made me cry. Made me sad for Chang’s loss, for my own loss, and all loss. 

Some of my favorite lines are as follows:

“When someone dies, letters are always engraved. When someone dies, there is a constant feeling of wanting to speak to someone, but the plane with all the words is crossing the sky.”

“Because dying lasts forever until it stops.”

“That day dusk didn't arrive. I went into it.”

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robinks's review

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

4.75

I really loved the format of the poems and the compilation as a whole, I just wish they had been presented in chronological order (though I suppose in this way, Chang emphasizes the timelessness of death). 

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gabbygarcia's review

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25


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spinesinaline's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

A poetry collection that deals quite heavily in personal and familial grief. Chang’s poems each take the form of an obituary, grieving the loss of language, time, and hope, among others, in the wake of her father’s stroke and worsening amnesia and her mother’s illness and death.

It’s a very heavy collection and feels a bit like drowning as Chang uses these poems to make sense of her emotions and put her grief to words. Some of the poems really resonated and I enjoyed the unique obituary style, but there were some sections that had more of an abstract format and they’ll likely take me a few more read-throughs to really grasp.

Thanks to Cori @ Bookish Cori on IG for her review that brought this one to my attention!

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