Reviews tagging 'Mass/school shootings'

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

9 reviews

carojust's review

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.75

"Doppelganger" is a book you read to find footing in our tumultuous world of politics, technology, war, healthcare and the permanent, pervasive ecological damage we've done in the name of capitalism. 

Naomi Klein centers this book around the strange occurrence of being mistaken as Naomi Wolf, a fellow writer and feminist whose beliefs she deems harmful and flat-out wrong. But she quickly expands this idea of doppelgangers toward the two selves of a person, a religion, a country. Then brings it back to say, rather persuasively albeit incongruously, that our answer to making the world better lies in abandoning individualism and engaging in a care-based, communal society.

Throughout the book, this idea of relating the world to "doubling" felt like a reach, and overdone. I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't need the constant packaging of mirrors and shadow worlds. Yin and yang, I get it. 

Also, this is a call to socialism, essentially. You'll be disappointed if you go into this expecting more of a memoir with a "Black Mirror" angle. But it's a great read for your social consciousness, and how to approach our increasingly hostile, diametrically opposed world.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Genocide, Racism, Rape, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Mass/school shootings, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

nreyno's review

adventurous challenging dark informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Eating disorder, Genocide, Gun violence, Rape, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Mass/school shootings, Pregnancy, Colonisation, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

milkfran's review

dark informative medium-paced

5.0

This was a book I couldn’t read without a pen in my hand to frantically underline every other word. I will be recommending this to everyone else I know who is also feeling similarly adrift in the bleak Mirror World of our times. 

A bit of context: I was (and am, recent political forays aside) a huge fan of Radiohead and picked up a second-hand copy of No Logo as a teenager to try and seem cool after reading an interview with Thom Yorke around the time they were recording Kid A saying he was reading it on their tour bus. It left me depressed for weeks but also quietly radicalised me to the extent that in the guff of my UCAS personal statement I wrote about how much Naomi Klein and George Orwell between them had made me pick a politics & history degree. I’m not sure how useful 5 years and £81k of debt to do the aforementioned degree was but reading Naomi Klein is never a waste. 

I was slightly apprehensive when I initially picked Doppelgänger up because I’ll admit to not being that interested in Naomi Wolf’s wild ramblings but although Good!Naomi does discuss Bad!Naomi in detail 

(“if the Naomi be Klein
you’re doing just fine
If the Naomi be Wolf
Oh, buddy. Ooooof.” 
@MarkPopham, via Twitter) 

Wolf’s descent through the looking glass is more of a narrative scaffold to hang Klein’s depressingly prescient thoughts on our current predicament/ the culture wars/ the disinformation pandemic/ late stage capitalism’s final dying wheeze/- whatever you want to call it- on. 

On p.322, she sums it up in her own words, describing the book as being about “The self as a perfect brand, the self as digital avatar, the self as data mine, the self as idealized body, the self as racist and anti-Semitic projection, the child as mirror of the self, the self as eternal victim.” 

I winced a little when the first mention of the pandemic came up (there seems to have been a collective forgetting about it all for many of us?) but reading her analysis of all the madness was a cathartic debrief about it all that I didn’t know I needed. 

As well as this, the bits criticising Israel from a Jewish perspective were even more powerful in light of the fact they were written before the repercussions for the October 7th attacks and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians. 

 

The only weak spot of the book for me was Chapter 10, ‘the anti-vax prequel’. Obviously the online discourse about autism and Autism Moms is fertile ground to harvest for a book about disinformation, and reading Naomi’s honest unfiltered thoughts on her son’s diagnosis felt raw and honest, some of it made me a little uncomfortable. It also felt the least fleshed out of all the chapters, perhaps because it was the most personal of them all and understandably difficult for the author to step back and gain some objectivity and distance. 

However, in the extremely unlikely event that Naomi Klein is reading this though, can I kindly say that the call is coming from inside the house and your son’s autism did not come from nowhere… certainly not from the parent who is a high-flying academic and self described ‘seeker of justice’… who discussed the eating disorder she had as a teen… and the one who says “‘pattern recognition’ is often how I describe the work of my life” on p.226. 

All of the glowing 5 star reviews on the blurb are accurate but whether the people in power or people we’ve lost to the mirror world will actually read it remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I’ll keep recommending it to anyone who’ll listen. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Antisemitism, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Eating disorder

cerysl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Medical content, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Classism, Deportation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

oworthyfool's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Grief, Gaslighting, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Bullying, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Police brutality, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Cultural appropriation, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

madscientistcat's review against another edition

challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Antisemitism, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Child death, Islamophobia, and War

Minor: Rape, Slavery, Transphobia, and Abortion

Extensive discussion of various genocides and the holocaust specifically

mads_jpg's review against another edition

challenging informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

4.25

I regret listening to the audiobook because there were so many sections I wanted to annotate the hell out of, so I'm gonna have to reread this once I've got a physical copy.

While this is a very zeitgeisty book, I think it'll age better than others, as it serves almost as a history book mixed with memoir mixed with psychology. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and Antisemitism

Moderate: Body shaming, Chronic illness, Confinement, Eating disorder, Genocide, Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Police brutality, Islamophobia, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Sexual violence, Slavery, Transphobia, and Abortion

meganpbell's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

Facing her own doppelgänger, leftist activist Naomi Klein explores the absurdity, inversion, and surreality of our cultural and political moment, offering piercing perspectives on self-branding and conspiracy theories, climate change and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and more. Sprawling, funny, intellectually invigorating, and disturbing in equal measure—if you get lost following Klein through the mirror world,  you’ll end with your feet on more solid ground.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Ableism, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Mass/school shootings, Death of parent, Colonisation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

ranocchietto's review

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic