Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Heaven

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

64 reviews

flashandoutbreak's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful sad medium-paced

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

3.5

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ueaoo's review against another edition

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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

This book was a hard read honestly, uncomfortable throughout with only a few breaks, so wouldn’t recommend if that’s not for you. I still was engaged though and found the writing style grow on me. It was thought provoking and gave me a lot to think about. The contrasting philosophies presented by different characters, for example, was really interesting. However, I was left dissatisfied by the ending and the overall progression of the story at that point.

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nausiqaa's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No

3.75

the more i think about it the more complex it seems

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mraddd's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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conspystery's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

4.25

I’m conflicted about this book. It’s deceptive in how shallow it appears, especially towards the beginning; the writing style is subdued and polite almost to the point of clinicality, and the main character’s plight seems painfully simple. But it’s so much more than that. Kojima’s character arc is particularly fascinating, and so are her impacts on the narrator-- she’s presented sympathetically and ironically at once in her ideas about how best to deal with bullying. Momose is her narrative foil, the embodiment of the opposite extreme of these ideas. Heaven dives deep into the philosophy of bullying, and neither of the two main ways it’s presented are particularly appealing; Kojima is too willing to accept needless suffering, and Momose is too willing to fall into nihilism and hopelessness to care about anything, let alone other people.

I think this book’s point is to balance these ideas about pain, to emphasize the importance of understanding that some suffering is out of our control while also asserting morality wherever it can be applied and standing up against needless pain when possible. It notes its own false dichotomy with how the main character responds to the ideas he’s shown. The way it makes this point is a bit meandering at times, with lots of scenes which feel like they compound the issues in the novel far past its main theme, and often deeply disturbing to read in its detail. Yet there are genuinely beautiful moments in this book as well, and the simple but precise writing highlights them in contrast with their darker, more uncomfortable counterparts. Overall, I liked what this book had to say about the importance of balance, and I also enjoyed the uncompromisingly sublime scenes (like at the very end of the novel.) The discomfort of the rest of the book was necessary to an extent, but some of it-- especially the scenes which were not explicitly, directly connected to the furthering of the philosophical content of the novel-- was a bit much for me.

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xerlynz_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad 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? It's complicated

4.75

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woosha's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

5.0

A quick read, brilliantly told from the POV of a 14 year-old boy. It got me into literary fiction. I cried so much while reading this. And to this day, I still can't stop thinking about how well-written it is (except for that one chapter bringing up

suicidal thoughts and self-harm, I don't think it was elaborated any further in the next chapters, or how it could have affected him

).

note : I didn't read the trigger warnings and I advise anyone who's interested in reading the book to do so beforehand.

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