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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
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
challenging
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-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
The Discomfort of Evening touches on grief and the way families fall apart in a unique way. Jas, the main character, exemplifies how anxiety and obsessive tendencies develop following the experience of severe trauma, and how children often feel the need to be the glue that keeps their dying families together in the wake of tragedy. That being said, this book uses incredible violence, molestation, and incest, among other things, as shock value and excitement for readers who clearly have never experienced these things. Sexual abuse is romanticized heavily in this book and is described in heavy detail literally for no reason other than to shock the reader. Child molestation, incest, abuse, etc. adds nothing to the book and just feels like a perverse fantasy for creepy readers to get off to. It’s all discussed in such specific detail too. None of that needed to be in this book whatsoever, and it’s clear that this book is not for survivors in any way, especially with how the author writes children literally enjoying being molested. All of these things are in here just to be taboo. It is not a discussion of sexual trauma or violence in any regard. It romanticizes sexual violence and abuse. Don’t read this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Antisemitism, Grief, Suicide attempt, Sexual harassment
Don’t fucking read this, my god.
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book took me a few weeks to get through. I wish I’d read up on exactly how dark it was before I picked it up, because it was quite profoundly disturbing. It begins with a sense of trickling discomfort, and soon it becomes an excessive onslaught, undoubtedly designed to shock and horrify. The ending was very strong and this book certainly raises some moral questions - how much can we forgive a grieving and traumatised child’s actions? Nevertheless, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if I’d known how difficult I would find it to read.
The book is dark, heart-breakingly sad, horror-inducing, and shocking. It is also poignant at places, and insightful. Written from the perspective of a 11-12 yr old girl, it strikes chords on the worlds that children make up inside their heads, some of them true some of them very far from true based on half-knowledge and half-known facts. It is also quite insightful that a lot of emption and feelings and measure of mental capacities that children do catch are far from being off. hence maybe it is imp to understand the mind of a child and help her make sense of things. More than anything, the story bares the extreme mental effect that parents have on children. A powerful story that you will carry in your head somewhere though you don't want to remember it.
If the various reviews did not warn you enough already, this is a mentally-taxing book. I would not advice on reading it if you are not in the balanced and right frame of mind.
If the various reviews did not warn you enough already, this is a mentally-taxing book. I would not advice on reading it if you are not in the balanced and right frame of mind.
This book is one of the most devastating books I’ve ever read. And also one of the strongest endings. I really don’t know how to rate it.
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, is the story about a strict religious family living on a farm in the Netherlands grieving over the loss of the oldest child told through the perspective of his 10 year old sister.
I’m not adverse to reading sad books but this was grim, uncomfortable, and the last third of the book I was held captive with mixed horror and needing to know how the book would end. I forced myself to finish the second half yesterday because I had been reading it so slowly and needed to be finished.
⠀
The thing is the writing and imagery is so strong. And like To Kill a Mockingbird, the book deals with adult themes from a child’s point of view. But I don’t think I could recommend this to anyone unless they wanted a truly dark, heartbreaking read. Not a read for 2020.
I don’t list content warnings, but this book contains animal cruelty, sexual abuse, unrelenting grief, suicide, etc.
Some strong passages:
“No one in the village liked to dwell: the crops might wither, and we only knew about the harvest that came from the land, not about things that grew inside ourselves.”
“Sadness ends up in your spine. Mum’s back is getting more and more bent.”
On her dad: “He’d threaten he’d leave for good. Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go.”
“I’m lucky Mum never empties my pockets, otherwise she’d find out about all the things I want to hang on to, the things I’m collecting to become heavier.”
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, winner of the 2020 International Booker Prize, is the story about a strict religious family living on a farm in the Netherlands grieving over the loss of the oldest child told through the perspective of his 10 year old sister.
I’m not adverse to reading sad books but this was grim, uncomfortable, and the last third of the book I was held captive with mixed horror and needing to know how the book would end. I forced myself to finish the second half yesterday because I had been reading it so slowly and needed to be finished.
⠀
The thing is the writing and imagery is so strong. And like To Kill a Mockingbird, the book deals with adult themes from a child’s point of view. But I don’t think I could recommend this to anyone unless they wanted a truly dark, heartbreaking read. Not a read for 2020.
I don’t list content warnings, but this book contains animal cruelty, sexual abuse, unrelenting grief, suicide, etc.
Some strong passages:
“No one in the village liked to dwell: the crops might wither, and we only knew about the harvest that came from the land, not about things that grew inside ourselves.”
“Sadness ends up in your spine. Mum’s back is getting more and more bent.”
On her dad: “He’d threaten he’d leave for good. Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go.”
“I’m lucky Mum never empties my pockets, otherwise she’d find out about all the things I want to hang on to, the things I’m collecting to become heavier.”
challenging
dark
slow-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
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Suicide, Religious bigotry