Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

69 reviews

catorureads's review

challenging dark 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? Yes

4.0

This book does not romanticize war, yet it shows us how we can find love even in the cruelest places.
While this book is disturbing and sad, I found the moments that will haunt me the most are the smallest little things. The In Memoriam pages in the newspaper. When you see 16 years old next to a name of a boy in the list of killed in action. When people who're both German and English are forced to fight against their kin. 

The thing that will keep lingering in my mind however, is the very last page of this book. Without spoiling, it's another newspaper article of 10 November 1918. I think that says enough. 

I did not cry but it was a very brutal book so make sure you're in the right headspace to read this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Gore, War, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Genocide

Moderate: Mental illness, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, and Antisemitism

Minor: Suicide, Vomit, and Toxic relationship

kiwialexa's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Mental illness, War, Fire/Fire injury, Medical trauma, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Grief, and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia, Bullying, Suicide attempt, Antisemitism, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Classism, and Suicide

iftheshoef1tz's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

This book was gutting. Gaunt and Ellwood as children, yearning for each other but not doing anything because they both think their affection for each other is too large for a simple boys’ boarding school dalliance, then

the way they love past each other at the end.

The speed with which all the characters’ naïveté was ripped away was breathtaking and staggering, as was the endless recitation of the injured and dead and dying. It really hammers home just how much of a slaughterhouse World War I was - it annihilated almost an entire generation of boys. 

I found Gaunt’s friends’ acceptance of his homosexuality really beautiful, and of course it’s upsetting that that happens and he really begins to come into himself

at the POW camp with his friends while Ellwood is alone and mentally deteriorating and losing everything that made him such a beam of light for Gaunt. The loss of his poetry - down through only “The Light Brigade” to nothing - was so fucking devastating.

Their love story was so fraught in different ways from beginning to end, and it never stopped hurting. 

Quote:
They were clear-eyed, the Greeks. They did not dress up the world with romance and chivalry, did not lure poetry-hearted fools into evil.

Tropes:
The horror of war
Boy soldiers
Killed by the bottom of the page
Just…say what you feel!!
Yearning that just breaks your heart
Like ships in the night

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Death, Violence, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Homophobia and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Antisemitism

aloe_v's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Reading time: 6 hours
Intense and compelling read

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Grief, War, Murder, Bullying, Blood, Gun violence, and Homophobia

Moderate: Sexual assault

Minor: Antisemitism

maritzasolo's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Homophobia, War, Gore, and Sexual content

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Classism, Panic attacks/disorders, Antisemitism, Death of parent, and Alcoholism

arayo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Violence, Suicide, Medical content, Homophobia, Bullying, Gun violence, Blood, Child death, Gore, War, Mental illness, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcohol, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Classism, Outing, Cursing, Antisemitism, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Vomit, Excrement, Xenophobia, and Sexism

starglitters's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and War

Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Alcohol, and Bullying

Minor: Racism, Panic attacks/disorders, and Antisemitism

writingcaia's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

Boys should be boys, boys that love boys, that hate boys, that dream of poetry and bravery, and that live in a world where epopees and the old generation glorifies war and giving life for God, King and Country.
What many dream of does come, a war, but little did they know it would be called the War to End all Wars. 
One by one, reaching adulthood and even before seeing 18 they depart to the front and butchery.
In a boys school two friends feel differently, but inevitably, one because he doesn’t want to be called a coward or a traitor (being of German descent and eighteen), and the other because he cannot conceive of his best friend, his loved one, dying without seeing him again, enlist. 
All the courage and bravado they felt while reading the In Memoriam with the list of the brave boys before them will soon die, along with thousands. It’s not glory they will face but a world of sickness and death, of loss and grief, of trauma and despair. A world they could not in their wildest dreams ever conceive.
Focused on our beautiful love bird boys on a relationship of miscommunication, this book still tells much of the tragedy of WWI especially among the younger boys, their disillusionment with God and Country, their loss of limbs, of face, of mind, of life. It also gives a peek at a world where boys full around with boys when it’s seen as a young boys “thing” but in war it’s a crime to love one another and act upon it.Another of the themes approached is the different ways in which aristocratic kids like these were treated and promoted compared to civil workers.
The love story drives the plot but it is so much more than that, and that depth of feeling, the poetry of love for country, than hate for it, the love for their friends and the grief for the lost ones.
This was one of my favourite books of 2023, and one I won’t forget!
Totally recommend for historical fiction fans, romantic historic fiction, WWI fiction fans, and lgbtqia+ romance fans.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, and Death

Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Bullying, Suicidal thoughts, and Mental illness

Minor: Antisemitism

zarahzoe's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I CANNOT HEAVE THE WORDS INTO MY MOUTH

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Suicidal thoughts, Antisemitism, Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Homophobia, Violence, Blood, Bullying, Classism, Gore, and Grief

beanie_bob's review against another edition

emotional funny informative sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Reading Around The World (5/199): England

I don’t want to make this the only value of the novel, but if you like Song of Achilles you must read this. War, loss of youth, love, beautiful writing - it’s all here.

I’m completely stunned by the fact that this is a debut novel. It’s so good. (To be fair, Alice Winn apparently wrote three unpublished novels before this, so we see that practice really does make perfect). I wish I had a physical copy to annotate. I can’t wait to see what comes next from Alice Winn.

I really love the the first third of this novel (even the first half). So much is brewing in this stage - we meet many of the main players, we witness and toil over unrequited love, we go to war, we experience tension and terror, and begin to accumulate death.

I love yearning. I love two people who believe they can’t be together, or that the other is uninterested, or who regret not being brave enough to say something, or who regret saying something and losing everything. Now do all of that under the pressure of a world war. Awful. Exquisite.

The last third of third works a little less for me, but I never lost my desire to follow the story to the end. 

Gaunt: Thoroughly my type. Tall, broad, wide, quiet, serious but completely smitten on the inside. War changes everyone and by the end he’s no longer a closed fist. 

Ellwood: His soul is eviscerated at some point. If Gaunt becomes who he’s meant to be (a leader, a kind man, an open man) Ellwood becomes what he never should have been, and then claws his way back from that. 

They’re just boys. They’ll be in their 40s when WW2 starts. War is hell.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Mental illness, War, and Death

Moderate: Antisemitism, Alcoholism, and Violence

Minor: Suicide