Stay and Fight: A Novel by Madeline ffitch

3.78 AVERAGE

olbeelaine's profile picture

olbeelaine's review against another edition

3.25
challenging 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

terraluft's review against another edition

DNF at 20% because it just wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Life is too short to read books you don’t immediately love!

whitneyastanley's review against another edition

4.25
challenging emotional slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

mikelandbeforetime's review against another edition

3.5
adventurous dark emotional informative sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
cryptic_casp's profile picture

cryptic_casp's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
This
book is interesting… I loved the deep dive into the gritty reality of homesteading and Appalachian farming. It exposed that the fantasy of cottage core “let’s all move into houses and live off the land together” is just that, a fantasy. The characters are far from perfect, their life is nasty and ugly, and their community/family rarely get along unless there’s extreme outside conflict forcing them together. The whole novel symbolizes a symptom of poverty and by extension capitalism. The traumas inflected upon the characters, both the barely wealthy and poor, by capitalism push them to want to live their life removed from its structure. Yet no matter how self sufficient they become they can never escape it and actually by attempting to leave they are further harmed by the capitalist system. This happens because to leave capitalism means to leave society. They can never get to the point of producing enough resources without using capitalism or society to help them. The only way to actually make something like this book work is if a large community is built around the idea and all together leave capitalism and create a new social structure. Thanks for reading this book review turned essay lmao.

tmenz09's review against another edition

4.0
adventurous challenging inspiring reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
jason_and_the_stacks's profile picture

jason_and_the_stacks's review against another edition

4.0
I started off with this book on a recommendation from a friend and while I'm typically open to reading most things, this book is not one I would have read without provocation. Themes of the story aside, my interest generally isn't taken by the prospect of modern-day homesteading, it just isn't. So to say that this book caught me off guard when suddenly I found myself relating to the characters is a bit of an understatement.

This story flags a bit near the midway point under the weight of its premise but picks back up quickly. I've seen people call this a slow read, I disagree. The slow part of this was getting a sense of the characters and once that was established I felt like the author did a nice job conveying her own sort of personal struggles in the varied collected persona of her story. I don't know if she meant it this way but what comes across to me is multiple conversations about acceptance, and I really enjoyed that.

lesbottt's review against another edition

2.0
I could stop going “wtf is wrong with these people”

danidictophile's review against another edition

3.5
emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

amyredgreen's review against another edition

4.0
4 1/2. Such an unusual set of characters and great writing. Loved this.