Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

81 reviews

thiscryptidreads's review against another edition

informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

A somber and detailed look into the history of industry, medicine and the lives touched by the glowing element radium. 
The Girls working in Radium factories, the "shining girls" glowing with what they thought to be simply a fantastical paint, peddled to the rich as a health tonic and beauty aid. They all took jobs to help their families in what seemed a safe factory setting painting watches, a coveted job for many. The beginning of their stories seems so hopeful and full of promise, it was truly heartbreaking listening as they had so many dreams and their lives taken from them from something they deemed do harmless. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Gaslighting

jasperkelley2015's review

emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.5

A book that is out of my usual comfort zone of reading. But I'm glad I stuck with it and finished this book. It is LONG but super well written. The women the book is centered around were fantastic choices. By the end, I felt like they were someone I could hung out with. It is a very difficult book to get through, and hearing these stories is not easy. But they are stories that need to be told!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Murder, and Pregnancy

greenlivingaudioworm's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body horror, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Infertility, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

anyareads's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Body horror, Infertility, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

cuteasamuntin's review

emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

I think the first time I cried while reading this was only a chapter or two in. At some point, I simply didn’t bother to wipe my eyes anymore. I found myself filled with righteous anger and furious anguish, unable to find my footing in the accustomed professional distance I have cultivated in my own career as a historian. Please note that the rest of this review contains spoilers consisting of readily-available historical information and references.

Going into this book, I had a passing familiarity with the Radium Girls and a pre-existing understanding of the long history of companies disregarding the welfare of their employees and customers in the name of profit. I thought I understood the Radium Girls’ role in the US developing stronger workers’ safety protections, accompanied by the description of teenage girls  painting their teeth and nails with radium paint so they would glow. I knew they were lied to and that they died, but I’d always had the vague impression that it was perhaps 20 or so young women who died of radiation poisoning before they reached 30.

Kate Moore did an incredible job of honoring the lives and memories of the many, many women who were lied to, irreparably harmed, and emotionally abused and gaslit by their employers from the moment their work began in the early 1920s through their deaths at ages ranging from their teens to their nineties. Moore’s rage and grief at the injustice done to the America’s “ghost girls” is palpable throughout. Unlike I’ve experienced with many other works of popular history, I found this to bolster, rather than detract from, the narrative as it unfolded. 

I was both professionally impressed and personally moved by Moore’s dedication to thorough research through compiling existing primary sources and performing her own oral history interviews of people related to the Radium Girls. She synthesized these sources into a cohesive and compelling narrative of US labor history. Moore clearly delineates between known facts and her own conjectures of intimate details or internal thoughts based on available evidence. Rather than distracting, I found Moore’s frequent integration of direct quotations from archival materials and her own interviews to be a powerful tool that also made me more willing to trust the points where she had to guess at missing details or the internal workings of the entities involved in this history.

While the work is densely packed with both immediately vital and contextually relevant but tangential information, I did not at any point find the major points obscured or the pacing to be slow or bogged down.

I find I have few words of my own to describe the companies who knew they were poisoning their employees and the towns around them, then lied, slandered, and cheated these people into their early, irradiated graves. Over 100 years later, we are still cleaning up after them. This book is a well-deserved memorial for the women whose pain and suffering led to better protections for workers and the entirety of the American public. May their memories be a blessing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Bullying, Cancer, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate to graphic descriptions of

the effects of radiation, dental and medical procedures, acute and chronic infections, privacy violations, radioactive pollution, and criminal neglect of worker safety.

milesss's review

dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Multiple times while reading I was moved to tears. An incredible account I could hardly put down. Engaging and emotional with attention to detail and honesty.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Sexism, Terminal illness, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Eating disorder, Infertility, Miscarriage, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, and Gaslighting

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Abortion, and War

viccoll's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, Medical trauma, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Abortion

mondovertigo's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: War

Minor: Abortion

miaaa_lenaaa's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.75

This is important
I didnt like a lot of the writing but i think a lot more people need to know about this and i respect her for writing it
Its often infuriating and hard to read and so fucking sad but this narrative needs to be told. The way that women and workers are constantly and consistently ignored for company gain does make you start to lose all hope in humanity thought.
That the worst possible scenario was barely listened to (and arguably not listened to) leaves little room for hope

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, and Gaslighting

krytykesa's review against another edition

inspiring sad fast-paced

3.25

The story itself is sensational and fascinating. It tells about women who suffered from cruel and careless employers and decided to change their country.

The author laid such an opaque anti-capitalist narrative in the story that it literally screams from every page. I would say that Kate Moore's narrative style is very far from the documentary genre.

The author's style caused my relatively low review of the entire book. I think she came off as too speculative, unhinged, and emotional (in the wrong places). Often, Ms. Moore repeats herself over and over to make a point. And in other places, which would need more context, on the contrary, he does not dwell on the important.

This book would have benefited if Kate Moore had done this research and written a piece of fiction based on it. But I am glad I read it.

I wish I were more optimistic, and I believe that something has changed significantly in the society. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Death