Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

33 reviews

amgarrido's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Trafficking, Slavery, Colonisation, Violence, and Genocide

alexreadsall's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

Bernadine Evaristo is a genius. I love her mind and her writing so much. Blonde Roots is her debut and even in this you can see how good she is going to be.
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This book explores the idea of power and what absolute power can do. Blonde Roots asks the question ‘what would have happened if the African peoples had come to enslave white Europeans instead?’ And what an exploration it was.
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I don’t really know how to talk about this book. In a lot of weird ways I loved it because of Bernadine Evaristo’s pure writing ability. She has such a way with words and characters that it’s hard not to love what she writes. But it wasn’t an easy read in a lot of different ways. The horrors that happen to the whyte slaves inflicted by their blak masters are graphic and she just lays it all out without apology.
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I have to admit I had a hard time remembering that our main character was whyte. I had to consciously remind myself that this was a fictional made up history and that everything was flipped. Which might have been part of Evaristo’s point. That absolute power over others will eventually and always lead to the same horrific results. Regardless of race.
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I’m not a scholar, I’m not even a college graduate so I’m not sure if I have the language to talk about this book. But it made an impact and I think that what Evaristo did was incredible. It didn’t change how I feel about history and it didn’t give me sympathy for white people but it did help me to explore how power works.
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Here’s the deal I will read anything that Bernadine Evaristo has written or will write. I’m glad I read it because it’s such a unique idea, taking a race of people who historically have always had the power and taken whatever they wanted and taking that power away from them in the most horrible way possible. It’s clever and at times darkly funny and the way she takes every aspect of that awful time in history and made it about whytes was brilliant.
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I guess all of this is to say I liked the book with caveats. And I would love more people to read it so I can chat with others about it. If you have read it please let me know so we can chat!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Violence, and Racism

carolinalvsfeliciano's review

reflective tense fast-paced

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

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery and Violence

Minor: Rape

rhianonw's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Blood, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Racism, Violence, Slavery, and Torture

Moderate: Abandonment

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Body shaming, Confinement, Rape, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cannibalism, Child death, Classism, Genocide, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Death of parent, Death, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Self harm, and Vomit

sydneybedell's review

challenging dark reflective 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? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Death, Violence, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Excrement

franzi_'s review

adventurous challenging dark reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Violence, Xenophobia, Slavery, Injury/Injury detail, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Addiction, Torture, Sexual assault, Confinement, and Pedophilia

Minor: Pregnancy

amberinbookland's review

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Rape, Trafficking, Slavery, Racism, Violence, Vomit, Excrement, Torture, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Murder, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Grief, Gore, Death of parent, Death, Confinement, Child death, Cannibalism, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Alcoholism and Alcohol

booksjessreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad 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? Yes

4.0

I really enjoyed this book and definitely lived up to my expectations! Despite not having read all of her books, Bernadine Evaristo has become an auto-buy author for me and I can't wait to get through some more of her work!

The concept of this book was brilliant, combining two pieces of traditional slavery literature - the slaver's manifesto and the escape story - and allowed us to gain both the slaver and enslaved perspectives. The whole concept of white people being enslaved was what also drew me to the book. It was a lot of the profound and creative word choices in relation to this that really hooked me.

I noticed also that the slaver's writings in Blonde Roots drew influence from slaver's and travellers writings, such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which added an eerie and uncomfortable sense to the manifesto presented in the novel. The dark humour crafted around white culture also added an interesting dimension and the satire in regards to this was so well crafted!

Whilst there were more "humorous" parts, it goes without saying that there are much darker themes at play and it did get quite heavy. However, it's a novel that really allowed me to engage and follow the characters and nevertheless I really enjoyed it! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Slavery, Child death, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Rape and Miscarriage

noless_nomore's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence, Slavery, and Violence

helendipietro's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.5

 I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one as I like the concept but found the plot itself to be anticlimactic. I definitely respect and appreciate the idea but didn’t enjoy it. I listened to this as an audiobook and found it to be an interesting mixture of history and satire. Evaristo, who is of Nigerian and British descent, describes the history of a slave, her family and her owners, with the clever twist that the roles of Britain and West Africa are reversed. In this book those who exploit, murder and rape have black skins, and the oppressed are white. 

Because of the subject matter, it is a very heavy read at times and is something that will stay with you afterwards. However, I found that the novel lacked continuity as the story went on and instead of switching perspectives, I would have preferred to hear more of Doris’s story. Overall, the content was thought-provoking but as a story quite confusing and hard to follow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Violence, Slavery, Rape, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Racism, Rape, Violence, and Colonisation