Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

23 reviews

nialiversuch's review against another edition

adventurous emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Addiction, War, Xenophobia, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Gun violence, Grief, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Death, Alcoholism, Abortion, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Pregnancy, Emotional abuse, Stalking, Suicide, and Mental illness

Minor: Infidelity

sib_reads's review against another edition

adventurous reflective slow-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? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Addiction, Death of parent, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Toxic relationship, Violence, and War

Moderate: Abortion, Hate crime, Homophobia, Abandonment, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide

Minor: Incest, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child death, Drug use, Excrement, Infertility, Pedophilia, Racism, and Xenophobia

nicoles_reading_corner's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious 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? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Sexism, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Rape, Toxic relationship, and War

Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, and Homophobia

frogknitting's review against another edition

adventurous reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

The good: it was extremely well researched. The realism was very high, and I enjoyed the individual lines of prose. 

However, the longer I read the book, the more it started to grate on me. This book really, really didn't need to be as long as it was. The movie bits, while entertaining, were so sparse throughout that they seemed pretty much useless. They could've done something with how the public perceives her now as an epilogue type thing. 
Also, this book is extremely sexual. There aren't even any real sex scenes within it, but essentially everyone has sex with everyone else (an exaggeration, but not much of one), and people commit adultery like it's nothing. There's no way this many people would be alright with that, this many times. 
The first half of the book was more compelling, but it drug on for so long. It spend so much time

with Barclay, that when she left him, it seemed like we were just running along. Okay, this happens, now this, now this. There was barely anything about the flight itself!!

Also, idk, something made me uncomfortable about them bringing in Sitting in the Water Grizzly as a comparison to Marian, a white woman who is more comfortable in men's clothes. Now I know about a queer Indigenous historical figure, but he wasn't represented well in this story at all. 
Another thing: the characters in this seemed like vessels with which to tell the story. I read about Marian for 650 pages and I really didn't care about her once I was done with the book. I couldn't tell you much about her. She's determined? Loves to fly? Masculine and doesn't want a stereotypical relationship? Same for most of the other characters. Hadley was more fleshed out, but we saw so little of her that it didn't really matter.
Finally (finally!) I didn't like the ending.

It seemed like a cop out — you thought Marian died? Of course she didn't, you just think that because that's what's expected! She found some random guys and hid with them before running away to New Zealand, although that wasn't foreshadowed at all throughout the book! It was a rushed ending, and I wasn't a big fan of it.

This book could have done with serious editing and cut backs. By the end, I was just skimming. I think it would've been better at about 400 pages without the Hadley/movie subplot, as interesting as it was. Alternatively, focused it more on a half/half split between the two, instead of the 90% Marian that we got. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual harassment, Emotional abuse, Death, Alcoholism, Sexual content, War, Infidelity, and Medical content

Moderate: Rape

mirireads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Homophobia, Incest, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, and War

Minor: Abortion, Animal cruelty, Infidelity, and Medical content

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.

mharrison13's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-paced

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

3.0

I enjoyed the flight and geographical descriptions, but I didn’t enjoy any of the characters… except, maybe, Caleb. There was a lot of abuse and infidelity. But at the same time it seemed to gloss over any emotional moments and move on to the next event. 
I felt like the narrative just bounced around between different perspectives too much instead of flowing well. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity

Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, and Domestic abuse

kacyn21's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Infidelity, Child abuse, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, and Incest

The author is clearly a good writer and has a way with words, but I was too disappointed by the frequent dysfunctional sexual scenarios that played out multiple times in the first 30 pages alone. It was too disturbing for me to continue onward. The storyline/plot is very interesting and I wish these scenes hadn’t been written so graphically and frequently. Takes away from the rest of the story.

paolina's review against another edition

adventurous emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

Took me ages to get through this one. I was always engaged while reading it, but seldom felt like picking it back up again when I set it down for a while due to all the hardships the characters go through. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Sexual violence, Suicide, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicidal thoughts, War, Infidelity, Death of parent, Sexism, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

ashleysbookthoughts's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Wow. Have you ever read a book that stuck with you so much that you dreamed about it? I’ve been dreaming of airplanes and Marian Graves for the past several nights. 

Great Circle was just the epic story I needed to close out the year. It’s almost 600 pages, but reads like a much shorter novel. Maggie Shipstead is a great writer. Her prose is descriptive yet readable and she manages to capture the sensations her characters experience. There are periodically asides (about the history of Missoula Montana, the history of women pilots) that in a lesser writer’s hands would be extraneous and annoying, but Shipstead manages to use these asides to add depth to her story. 

I don’t want to say more, because I think the discovery is a huge part of the experience of this novel. Suffice to say, I felt all the things while reading this: worry, rage, heartache, hope, and joy. I loved it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Rape, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Abortion, Child death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, and Infidelity

Minor: Homophobia