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Reviews tagging 'Drug use'
A Visit From the Goon Squad: Hachette Essentials by Jennifer Egan
32 reviews
rebeccadiv's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book was very interesting to me because when I was reading it, I was engaged. But when I would put it down, I didn't feel particularly drawn to pick it up again. I'm not sure I would have finished it if I didn't have the second one on my TBR to read. I did enjoy following how all of the characters connected though.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual assault
Moderate: Self harm, Grief, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Addiction, and Suicide
Minor: War, Homophobia, and Racism
lacykells's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug use and Drug abuse
dameevewills's review against another edition
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Sexual violence, and Suicide attempt
beetle4bugs's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Read this book for my english class. I heavily enjoyed it, and analyizing it’s themes was a highlight of reading. I bought a used copy and had a blast marking/underlining each bit that piqued my interest. Egan has an amazing writing style(s) and it’s given me inspiration for my own projects, 10/10 book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Sexual content, Drug use, and Grief
annaki_laila's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Weird. Good and bad. Once I realised each chapter was the first and last time we'd get each character's perspective, I enjoyed it more - it felt more valuable. Overall interesting. One major thing I didn't like was the last chapter - maybe could've done entirely without it, and made the PowerPoint chapter the last one (I enjoyed that one) - because the cynical take on the future really overshadowed the actual narrative and full-circle-ness, for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Drug use, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Racism, Self harm, and Death
wilycheese's review against another edition
lighthearted
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It's a meandering compilation of sad stories. Some of them are more interesting than others. They're all connected to Bennie and Sasha, but none of them really develop the characters they're about because you get singular access to one moment in their lives. I assume this is to reflect how life works sometimes, but it leaves me wondering what the author was hoping to accomplish with this book. Beauitful storytelling is a perfectly valid standalone goal, but I don't think most of these stories accomplished that.
I obviously finished the book but it felt very Catcher in the Rye, like the purpose of every character was to give the reader someone to pity and drive home a (generally obvious) lesson that people have whole lives by leering at snapshots of their troubled pasts. All of this I'm willing to chalk up to a particular work just not being my genre, but...
My biggest issue is with how hasty and sloppy the last chapter feels. It feels like it's supposed to tie everything together but there's also some pretty specific allusions to great recent historical events that make it feel like the editor made the author cut six chapters where some of that shit was explained. Like... a whole ass war that *has to take place* during the lives of every character in the book, plus some major attack in NYC specifically while most of the characters live there, is just kinda winked at in the last chapter and it comes up in NO ONE'S life in the preceeding 260 pages.
I obviously finished the book but it felt very Catcher in the Rye, like the purpose of every character was to give the reader someone to pity and drive home a (generally obvious) lesson that people have whole lives by leering at snapshots of their troubled pasts. All of this I'm willing to chalk up to a particular work just not being my genre, but...
My biggest issue is with how hasty and sloppy the last chapter feels. It feels like it's supposed to tie everything together but there's also some pretty specific allusions to great recent historical events that make it feel like the editor made the author cut six chapters where some of that shit was explained. Like... a whole ass war that *has to take place* during the lives of every character in the book, plus some major attack in NYC specifically while most of the characters live there, is just kinda winked at in the last chapter and it comes up in NO ONE'S life in the preceeding 260 pages.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Drug use
jsingh's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
3.75/5
This was an interesting read! I agree with a lot of the 3-star comments here. I picked up this book because it won a Pulitzer Prize. Egan can certainly write well. I wish there was a more contiguous plot, however. I left the book wondering what I was supposed to learn from it all. I loved certain stories more than others - I think my favorite was that of La Doll/Dolly. What a nickname!
Below are some of my favorite quotes:
"I made Jocelyn repeat each detail of the story until I knew everything she knew...so we could be equal again." (1:28:32)
"Marty plugs in his violin and we launch into our best song: "What the fu$k?"" (1:31:08).
"Jocelyn and I shriek and hug onto Benny, which, for me, is like touching something electrical—his actual body in my arms. I remember every hug I've given him. I learn one thing each time..." (1:38:39).
"'The world is full of sh&theads, Rhea. Don't listen to them. Listen to me.' And I know that Lou is one of those sh&theads, but I listen." (1:59:08)
"Rolf imagines sharks just under his feet, but he doesn't turn or look back. He keeps swimming toward that white sand, knowing instinctively that his struggle to stay afloat is the most exquisite torture he can concoct for his father." (2:46:45)
"Lou and Mindy dance close together...but Mindy is thinking of Albert, as she will periodically after marrying Lou and having two daughters—his fifth and sixth children—in quick succession as if sprinting against the inevitable drift of his attention." (2:52:16)
"In the Volvo, Stephanie slipped an advanced copy of Bosco's new album 'A to B' into the CD player out of some sense that in doing so, she was strengthening her alibi." (4:12:26)
"She'd thought that because she could do something very very well, namely, get the best people into one room at one time, she could do other things well too—like design. And La Doll had had a vision: broad, translucent trays of oil and water suspended beneath small, brightly colored spotlights whose heat would make the opposing liquids twist and bubble and swirl. She'd imagined people craning their necks to look up, spellbound by the shifting liquid shapes...they began to collapse...sending scalding oil onto the heads of every glamorous person in the country, and some other countries too." (4:55:19)
"Jarred once again by [Sasha's] memory, Ted felt the pressure that arose in him when he tried to talk about his work, a confusion about what could have driven him to disappoint his parents and rack up mountainous debt, so he could write a dissertation claiming (in breathless tones that embarrassed his now) that Cezane's distinctive brushstrokes were an effort to represent sound, namely, in his summer landscapes, the hypnotic chant of locusts." (7:54:48)
This was an interesting read! I agree with a lot of the 3-star comments here. I picked up this book because it won a Pulitzer Prize. Egan can certainly write well. I wish there was a more contiguous plot, however. I left the book wondering what I was supposed to learn from it all. I loved certain stories more than others - I think my favorite was that of La Doll/Dolly. What a nickname!
Below are some of my favorite quotes:
"I made Jocelyn repeat each detail of the story until I knew everything she knew...so we could be equal again." (1:28:32)
"Marty plugs in his violin and we launch into our best song: "What the fu$k?"" (1:31:08).
"Jocelyn and I shriek and hug onto Benny, which, for me, is like touching something electrical—his actual body in my arms. I remember every hug I've given him. I learn one thing each time..." (1:38:39).
"'The world is full of sh&theads, Rhea. Don't listen to them. Listen to me.' And I know that Lou is one of those sh&theads, but I listen." (1:59:08)
"Rolf imagines sharks just under his feet, but he doesn't turn or look back. He keeps swimming toward that white sand, knowing instinctively that his struggle to stay afloat is the most exquisite torture he can concoct for his father." (2:46:45)
"Lou and Mindy dance close together...but Mindy is thinking of Albert, as she will periodically after marrying Lou and having two daughters—his fifth and sixth children—in quick succession as if sprinting against the inevitable drift of his attention." (2:52:16)
"In the Volvo, Stephanie slipped an advanced copy of Bosco's new album 'A to B' into the CD player out of some sense that in doing so, she was strengthening her alibi." (4:12:26)
"She'd thought that because she could do something very very well, namely, get the best people into one room at one time, she could do other things well too—like design. And La Doll had had a vision: broad, translucent trays of oil and water suspended beneath small, brightly colored spotlights whose heat would make the opposing liquids twist and bubble and swirl. She'd imagined people craning their necks to look up, spellbound by the shifting liquid shapes...they began to collapse...sending scalding oil onto the heads of every glamorous person in the country, and some other countries too." (4:55:19)
"Jarred once again by [Sasha's] memory, Ted felt the pressure that arose in him when he tried to talk about his work, a confusion about what could have driven him to disappoint his parents and rack up mountainous debt, so he could write a dissertation claiming (in breathless tones that embarrassed his now) that Cezane's distinctive brushstrokes were an effort to represent sound, namely, in his summer landscapes, the hypnotic chant of locusts." (7:54:48)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use
Moderate: Sexual content
autihd_elno's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
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? Yes
4.0
I enjoyed this book quite a lot until the final chapter. The constantly shift POV was interesting and overall I found it worked for me, there were only two or so chapters I found dragged relative to the rest of the book. The final chapter didn't ruin the book for me by any means, but something about the speculative fiction element of it didn't land well for me. Maybe it would have landed better in 2010, but I had trouble buying into the imagined future tech. I also didn't much like the character of Alex, and not so much in a like-ability way, I didn't necessarily "like" a good number of the POV characters in the book, but for whatever reason Alex, or his story, felt like a let down, or anti-climax for the end of the book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug use, Suicide, Mental illness, Racism, and Fatphobia
Minor: Infidelity, War, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Suicide attempt, Genocide, Pregnancy, and Drug abuse
readbycarina's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-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? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug abuse, Pedophilia, Infidelity, Adult/minor relationship, Drug use, and Mental illness
Moderate: Suicide attempt, Death, Self harm, Grief, and Misogyny
mylargirl's review against another edition
emotional
funny
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
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicide, and Pedophilia
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Racial slurs, Drug use, Addiction, and Mental illness