Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

6 reviews

gbentley's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Child abuse, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Toxic relationship, Racial slurs, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Miscarriage, Medical content, Physical abuse, Drug use, Violence, Sexual violence, Racism, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Suicide

_luminess_'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? It's complicated

4.0

The characters were amazingly written! I really felt for Connie the whole way through, and even the background characters were all carefully detailed and felt human. This was what pushed this book from simply a good essay into a good story as well. I'm a huge fan of Ursula K Le Guin, and the same emotional depth and tenderness of her writing can be found here in Piercy's work.

One star taken off because a huge amount of the worldbuilding was delivered plainly through characters' mouths— I got used to it, and I'm not sure if there would have been a better way to include it all, but it did somewhat cheapen the writing of an otherwise masterfully penned work.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: War and Sexual content

Minor: Child abuse and Incest

arlaubscher's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Suicide, Blood, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Self harm, Sexism, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Grief, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Medical content, Mental illness, and Violence

Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Body shaming, Drug use, Blood, Colonisation, Homophobia, Self harm, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Classism, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Rape, Infertility, Police brutality, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Sexual assault

mar's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Medical content, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Sexism, Forced institutionalization, Racism, and Confinement

Moderate: Death, Grief, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia

Minor: Suicide, Police brutality, and Racial slurs

trademark's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Physical abuse, Sexism, and Drug use

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Suicide

briartherose's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

4.0

A few bullet-point thoughts:

• This is a well-written, creative, diverse novel. I really enjoyed reading it. The mental hospital scenes in particular are powerful, but gritty and uncompromising. They provide an often jaw-dropping portrait of life as a impoverished woman of colour in mid-20th century America.
• The Mattapoisett scenes, while a creative vision of the future, often seemed tangential (and more than a little didactic). The reason for Connie being transported to their timeline isn't made clear until well past the halfway point, encouraging the reader to interpret them as Connie's coping mechanism, or hallucination. Which I don't think the author intended.
• However, the brief scenes in the 'bad future' were fascinatingly horrible. Is their world of exploitative, unpleasantly violent media that far removed from our own?
• A side note about the gender politics of the novel: in Mattapoisett everyone is referred to by the gender-neutral pronoun 'person', or 'per', yet the author insists on referring to those same characters as male or female. Even in-universe someone refers to their people as 'biological males and females'. Either the author didn't really understand the purpose of gender-neutral pronouns, or she was mocking them for it: whichever way it was, it comes off awkward. It seems like Piercy was much more comfortable talking about racial politics than gender identity.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racial slurs, and Racism