Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

The Power by Naomi Alderman

19 reviews

lmgst30's review

adventurous medium-paced

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

4.5

Part Handmaid's Tale, part Animal Farm. With some sci-fi tying it all together.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape

Moderate: Murder, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence

Minor: Trafficking, Bullying, and War

claudiamacpherson's review against another edition

challenging 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? Yes

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Sexism, Religious bigotry, Misogyny, War, Rape, Physical abuse, Sexual harassment, Vomit, Torture, Sexual content, Gun violence, Grief, Gore, Death, Cursing, Murder, Medical trauma, Medical content, Hate crime, Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, and Body horror

Minor: Self harm, Bullying, Child death, Abortion, Alcohol, Kidnapping, Police brutality, Slavery, and Suicide

i_read_big_boucs's review

adventurous dark emotional funny informative inspiring mysterious reflective 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? Yes

5.0

I don't know how to describe this. Wow. Left me with such a shock and many questions, I'll be thinking about it for a while.


Thoughts:


- Is it weird that this book was very oddly empowering? I was simultaneously shocked in horror by the violence of the things that happened, but I guess I had never experienced myself as a woman as potentially "running the world" or the kind of person one has to fear. Is this why men like all the boom boom military movies? Because they're always the one doing the killing and not the permanent victims in all media? It was really interesting to really experience in my gut the way the female characters were just not afraid anymore. I felt safe, I felt powerful. It made me realize how much I take for granted unconsciously that I am vulnerable to harm in many situations, and that this is just such a default I experience it as the human condition. This was a powerful emotional experience.

- as a feminist, there was this permanent anxiety in me that this book would be used in an anti-feminist way to say "Look! this is what the feminists want!" because we spend so much energy saying we don't want female domination but equality. So there was something that felt incredibly taboo but also exciting and morally complex about running with the opposite narrative, while the cleverness of the gender-flipped details is such that it serves a feminist point as well.

- something I haven't really settled my mind on is the dimension of masochistic sexual excitement experience by Tunde. In some ways, I found the inclusion of how domination becomes eroticised accurate to heterosexism and the way women under patriarchy come to experience things. But it was also extremely disturbing and existed really throughout the whole book. Does it represent the way men write women in flipped? Is it also a way of embracing this moral complexity? Oof.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Suicide, Child abuse, and Murder

gabgeh's review

adventurous dark reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Incredible. Amazing. Thought-provoking. Best book I've read this year. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Torture, Violence, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Trafficking, War, Xenophobia, Body horror, Death, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Transphobia, Addiction, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Abandonment, Death of parent, Drug use, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Mental illness, Rape, Self harm, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Slavery

thelizzielibrary's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

Well, this will certainly give you food for thought. It was all sorts of fucked up and terrifying. It will live in my mind forever. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Excrement, Gore, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Addiction, Antisemitism, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Trafficking, Violence, and War

brigiddolan's review

adventurous dark reflective tense fast-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? Yes

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Gun violence, Medical content, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicide, and Violence

mossybean's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

It took me a while to finish this book, as I listened to it as an audiobook. I highly recommend the audiobook version, as it is very immersive and adds a lot to the story. I loved the concept of this novel, even though it’s a very bleak perspective. I also really liked the perspectives of the four different characters, it’s an asset to a story that implicated the whole world. I found it a bit slow in the first half or so, but after that point the story became very gripping and impossible to take a break from. The only aspect I didn’t like was the descriptions of violence, as I found sometimes were excessive. Overall, it was a great read. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Gore, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, and Violence

octopus_farmer's review

dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.0

It was gripping to read, especially with the frame narratives of the letters and the "artifacts". I also liked how it avoided gender essentialism in the violence and horror of the story. I hadn't expected quite so many

rape attempts,

but it made a sort of sense for the discussion of gendered violence at hand, and

the failed attempts did make the last rape in the refugee camp much more horrific.

I don't know if I'll read it again. I certainly wouldn't recommend this as a light-hearted speculative book. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual violence, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Medical trauma, and Suicide

Minor: Excrement and Trafficking

katherinew's review

adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Murder, Torture, Medical content, Child abuse, Child death, Vomit, and Suicide