Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Kairos

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

55 reviews

a_h416's review against another edition

2.5

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Erpenbeck is clearly a good writer, but I found the plot + characters too unsettling, and I wasn't taken in or convinced by the allegory.

Content Warnings

maddiechristine15's review against another edition

dark reflective tense slow-paced

the relationship between the two characters is so successfully suffocating it took me ages to finish the last 1/3 of this book because I needed to get away from hans.. i don’t even know what to rate this ..

Content Warnings

kegifford's review against another edition

2.0

challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book has been highly lauded but it was not for me. Whatever the supposed literary or intellectual justification for having pages and pages of a man abusing a woman physically, emotionally and sexually, it was just too much for me. In the end, whatever the set up, the reader’s time is spent consuming long descriptions of sexual humiliation, domination, and every kind of cruelty. I wish I had understood how very dark this book was before I picked it up.

Content Warnings

anamosa's review against another edition

3.0

dark sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The writing is so good. I loved Erpenbeck’s style. But i never felt so bad reading a book this entire year.

The author was so good at making the characters unlikable that it kind of ruined it for me. I couldn’t bare the controlling part of Hand and hated the submissive aspect of Katharina and this whole abusive relationship was hard to read. After Hans discovery of Katharina’s betrayal this book went downhill and I just couldn’t engage anymore. After the page 200 I was skipping paragraphs of the letters/ cassettes for Katharina, it sucked the life out of me…
The writing of the historical background saved this book and it was what made me finish it. Living in Berlin myself, I loved reading the eastern Berlin scenario and the feeling the atmosphere of the people living there during the fall of the Berlin Wall. The author nailed it!
It was my first Erpenbeck’s books. Although I didn’t enjoy the story that much, I’ll definitely try other her books and her nonfiction one since I loved her writing style.

Content Warnings

migle_l's review against another edition

3.5

dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The book is supposed to track the development of the lovers' relationship and the state's history simultaneously but arguably fails at the task. Yet, the strongest parts of the book are where the relationship is played out with the historic events at the backgroud.

The narrative middle was very hard to get through. The relationship got very dark and violent and even having finished the book I am not sure what role that played. Hans character is deeply dislikable and hard to emphasise with. The book finished on the strong note, though.

Content Warnings

vcatterson's review against another edition

1.0

dark emotional 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

I was excited to read this to get a view on what day to day life was like in East Germany in the 1980s. This aspect of the book was certainly interesting, but I disliked the characters from very near the start. Then halfway through, an event caused one character to double down on his toxic traits, and it became unintentionally a horror story. He was the narcissistic, substantially older member of a relationship with his much younger mistress, and exploited the power dynamic in multiple ways. The book didn’t really highlight this as problematic, or redeem the situation in any way. Just an unpleasant read overall.

Content Warnings

willow_thewisp's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Content Warnings

nikwui's review against another edition

2.0

dark emotional reflective slow-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

It’s been a while since I finished a book that I was really looking forward to reading for it to turn out to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. While the love story (and I use that term loosely) is an allegory for the change in Germany, I found myself too irritated by how irrational both parties were acting. I realize that this may be a personal issue but overall I feel like I wasted my time reading a rather clunky translation of a story that required more side research about Germany history than I initially thought I would need.

Content Warnings

alisonoreads's review against another edition

2.0

challenging dark sad slow-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

I don’t think it was necessary to the plot or characters to have the main male be so abusive. The sexual violence, physical assault, and emotional abuse was difficult and disgusting. I would not recommend this book, even if it tangentially shows how Berlin’s reunification progressed.

Content Warnings

notthatcosta's review against another edition

1.75

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I desperately wanted to like this book, but the more I tried to get into it the more difficult it became to pick up, because I fundamentally didn't enjoy it.

Kairos has been lauded with accolades, including the International Booker prize, and was even gushed upon by the shopkeeper who was checking the book out when I bought it. Naturally, I was very excited to get into it and expecting to be blown away. Unfortunately, I was almost immediately disappointed by how dense, meandering and downright baffling the prose were.

I think the book suffers from a few flaws, but above all, the protagonist feels uninteresting and anonymous throughout the book, making it difficult to engage in her plight or feel anything for her at all beyond a dull pity. I think a lot of this is down to it being written in the third person, whereas a first person account of the events would have given us a bit more insight. The detachment I felt from the main characters made Katherina's determination to stay with Hans despite him seeming awful with no redeeming characteristics and her living in another city and having a present support system (who knew about how fucked up Hans was???) even more baffling.

Another issue is the sheer span of time the book covers (seemingly 5 or so years), and how poorly that was handled. The pacing was atrocious, with months passing within the span of a few lines despite other parts lingering on micro moments within a day.

It wasn't all bad, though, I thought the world building of East Germany was really successful and made me wish the storytelling was done better.

Content Warnings

More...