Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

12 reviews

ursa_arlo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Positives. I couldn't put down this book. How could I when this retelling was so fresh, so compellingly written? I love when retellings bring something new to the table and this novel for that both in style (by alternating between POV's until they had each reached their conclusion or by alternating the form in which the story was told, such as through the letters of Penelope) and perspective. The prose had a brutal beauty to it and did not sugarcoat the effects of war. 

This book, in a sense, is not what you might expect from a feministic retelling; these women are critical and jealous of each other, are absorbed with centering the loss of men in their lives. They have very little agency simply because they are an opressed group in a society where they are very rarely seen as more than property. But, with the little agency that they have, they do everything they can to survive- or die when that is the more tolerable option. They are not more dishonourable -not more honourable either- than the men  who the stories usually focus on. They are resilient, they will survive, and so will their stories. 

Negatives. This book is very bleak, war always is, which may or may not be a negative aspect depending on who you are asking. There are very few moments of hope to be found, especially near the end, which can make it a tough read. 

Quote. When a war was ended, men lost their lives. But the women lost everything else. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Ableism, Child death, Slavery, War, Genocide, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Grief, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and Rape

Moderate: Infidelity

miss_sunshine's review against another edition

dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Infidelity, War, Blood, Animal death, Kidnapping, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Murder, and Slavery

Moderate: Sexual assault, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Classism, and Rape

Minor: Ableism, Abortion, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Mental illness

galexy_brain's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I found it incredibly realistic that the women in this novel didn't necessarily realize that some of their thoughts and belief patterns about themselves and about other women were because of the patriarchy they are under.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Classism, Death, Slavery, Gore, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Death of parent, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Violence, and War

Moderate: Grief, Trafficking, Blood, Ableism, Suicidal thoughts, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic, Alcohol, Animal death, Confinement, Vomit, Alcoholism, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Abortion, Cannibalism, and Infidelity

nialiversuch's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Blood, Slavery, Suicide, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Abandonment, Suicide attempt, Violence, War, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Body horror, Child death, Genocide, Grief, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexism, Alcoholism, and Emotional abuse

noroomforghosts's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Death, Violence, Blood, Child death, War, and Slavery

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Classism, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Ableism

eni_iilorak's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Child death, Violence, Confinement, War, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Trafficking, Slavery, Rape, Murder, and Death

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Infidelity, Animal death, Pregnancy, Incest, and Torture

Minor: Ableism, Alcohol, and Torture

ashleycmms's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Sexual assault, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Grief, Pregnancy, Rape, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Ableism, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Confinement, Death, Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, and War

jeannekmele's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

cws: rape, child death, slavery, war, grief/trauma, genocide mention, spoilers

An exceptional collection of nearly universal tragedy across its heroines, pyrrhic victories are the norm for women whose darkest moments shine with vibrant human spirit on the pages of A THOUSAND SHIPS.

So often left footnotes--wives, mothers, sisters, sluts and daughters written to live, die, and love for the storied men of old--any background knowledge of the classical canon will lend an unerring hand to the conclusions we know these women will come to. Yet you cannot help but root for their success, or their peace if no such thing exist; despite the ends long since written for them, their human resilience and fragility and the womanly grit behind it all almost feels as if history could rewrite itself this time.
It doesn't, of course, but this in of itself is the devoted intersection of care and craft.

Though ATS is tragedy from the first page to last, the deluge of misery and loss roils and settles with the comfortable shape of a story until you're left with a sense of resolution that is not gratifying, but it is real. And that is the way of tragedy, trauma, and war: these things cannot be reversed, nor smoothed over, nor sated.

Andromache's family, first husband and son are dead; but she has another husband, another son, and her freedom; perhaps that must be enough. Penelope loses twenty years of her life, marriage, queenship and motherhood waiting for a husband who never comes home to her. But there is a like man in their bed, and his name is Odysseus, and perhaps that will have to be enough.

What of Eris, the instigator? What of Helen, the adulteress, the end of a kingdom? It is very easy, in a song about war, to glorify and vilify to the whims of one's own biases, or heroes, or chosen themes. I don't believe you will find such binary in this book.

A mother kills children to avenge her own. Slave-owners and rapists (we'll save the discussion on rape, duious consent, and power in the classical canon for another time) show gentleness and provision to their victims, even when regarded as property. The selfish goddesses who set a decade of devastation and a death toll unnumbered are, themselves, steered from the shadows by intentions as selfless and pragmatic as they are genocidal.

I will quote Natalie Haynes' afterword: 'Survivors, victims, perpetrators: these roles are not always separate. People can be wounded and wounding at the same time, or at different times in the same life.'

It would be erroneous to go into A THOUSAND SHIPS expecting anything less than complex women with rich inner lives under extraneous circumstances. In the man-made disaster that is war, it becomes impractical and impossible to keep an orderly measure of right and wrong. The human condition warps into something immeasurable under such extreme duress. Though by no means a soothing read, I nonetheless devoured ATS as I haven't done with a book in a long time.

I will close with this: Grief is a long-lived creature with many faces that may come in any amount or combination at any time, in three days or five years, or decades hence. Grief is angry, and loud, and dead-eyed; it is wasting away and endless tears and twists in our chests that by right of anatomy shouldn't twist there; it is jealousy and accusation and cruelty and violence and submission and insanity.
Grief is ugly, and so often in contemporary western culture it is unsightly and to be repressed. In women, grief is mockingly anticipated, oppressively levied, and mercilessly culled. A THOUSAND SHIPS is an excellent read across the board, but for those who are processing grief and trauma, who may be unsure how to (especially women), it is a cathartic and humanizing portrait of the externally-inflicted and yet worst, most unacceptable parts of ourselves that are too big for our bodies, and too loud for the world.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Gore, Slavery, Violence, Murder, War, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Misogyny, and Suicide

Moderate: Child death, Infidelity, Emotional abuse, Incest, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Trafficking, Rape, Fire/Fire injury, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Classism, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Ableism, Death, Fatphobia, Eating disorder, Pregnancy, Vomit, Alcohol, and Confinement

onceuponabookcase's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

 There was a time when several novels about the Trojan War that focused on the women were published around a similar time to each other, and I was intrigued by them all. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes was one of them, and while I found a fascinating and enjoyable read, I was somewhat underwhelmed.

I really liked the set up for A Thousand Ships. What we read is an epic poem written by a poet, who is being inspired by the Muse of Epic Poetry, Calliope. It's not the story he expects or wants to be telling; Calliope has other ideas of the stories he will tell - those of the women involved in or effected by the Trojan War. Those normally relegated to side characters, or not mentioned at all. It's quite amusing, how the unnamed poet gets frustrated, and upset, by what he's writing, but Calliope is determined about the direction this ship will be steered in. I loved this! I loved how Calliope was going to make sure the voices of these women, usually unheard, will come to the forefront of this story.

"But this the women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn." (p176)

I really enjoyed the premise. I loved the chapters with the gods, especially when Aphrodite, Athene, and Hera were arguing over who the Golden Apple belonged to, how vacuous they are, and how that contrasted with the tragedy of the war, the deaths, how it was down to their vanity. And also the larger explanation of why the war needed to be, and how people - gods and goddesses included - are pawns on a mighty chessboard, with much bigger things at play. This story is down to more than a man stealing another man's wife, it's so much bigger than that. It was just clever and intriguing, and thought-provoking. And I really enjoyed Haynes writing.

But I wasn't quite as keen on the structure of the novel. I was expecting A Thousand Ships to start after the fall of Troy, following the women from there. It's rather a collection of the stories of these women - from goddesses to humans, queens to priest's daughters to slaves - than a novel. It jumps back and forth through time - before the war, during the war, the first days after the war, several years after the war - following women we see for only one chapter, to others we return to several times; women who never meet, and women who are together but then separated. It was fascinating and interesting, with so many women I'd never heard of. But there didn't seem to be any proper structure. Most of the chapters could be shuffled about like a pack of cards. The chapters following the Trojan women as a group, and Cassandra and Andromache individually, and the letters Penelope writes to her husband Odysseus - which were brilliant, and so funny, even as my rage grew alongside hers- needed to be in a certain order, because they are the two threads throughout, but all the others could literally be in any order. There's no real flow. And seeing some characters for only a chapter, it's difficult to get too emotionally invested. Horrific things happen in this book, but we don't get to know or care about the characters a great deal before they happen, so it's shocking and awful, bloody terrible, but my heart didn't break. It was the same even with the characters we do see a few times, because we only get to see them a handful of times.

A Thousand Ships is important and powerful in it's way; I tabbed so many quotes, and Haynes has a lot to say about the treatment of women, and these women have very poignant, effecting things to say themselves. But I feel I would have preferred it if it was longer, with more time spent with certain characters, and for there to be more flow, a structure that made sense going from one chapter to the next. Saying that, I did still enjoy A Thousand Ships. I like Haynes ideas and what she does with them, and I'll definitely be checking out her other books following Greek myths. I just hope they'll have more of a narrative structure. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Moderate: Suicide, Rape, and Blood

Minor: Ableism and Vomit

This book features visceral, gorey descriptions, arson, mention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and infanticide.

nila's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, War, Violence, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexism, Murder, Misogyny, and Blood

Moderate: Slavery, Rape, Genocide, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Ableism and Adult/minor relationship