Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Bone China by Laura Purcell

2 reviews

g_monaghan's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“Ignorant people always fancied that ghosts appeared as shrouded ghouls. Anyone who had suffered loss could tell them differently. Sounds and smells haunted with more persistence, dragged you backwards in a way that nothing else could.” 

 

I strongly encourage you to read the book without reading anyone’s review of it first! 

 

It is actually impossible to talk about what this book is “about” without totally spoiling the book so let me just say that this book takes place in two dual timelines—one in the late 18th c. and one forty years later in the early 19th c.—alternating between the perspective of Louise, the daughter of a physician, and Hester, a maidservant, respectively. Hester’s story starts in London and both stories end in Cornwall. 

 

And just to be safe the rest of my review will be marked as spoilery. But again I strongly encourage you to read the book without reading anyone’s review of it first! 

 

This book does an excellent job of exploring the effects that trauma and fear and grief can have on a person’s mental health, how people attempt to deal with those things and what that experience can lead a person to believe about why bad things happen to us.

The writing was constantly reminding me of Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites but the story itself felt a lot more influenced by folklore and belief in the supernatural. I actually think this book counts as folk horror tbh because the imagery was truly horrific at times and what happened to Creeda was particularly, unbelievably disturbing/upsetting/enraging. Plus there was like quite a bit of medical and bodily gore lol I wasn’t really expecting all that...

Whether or not there were really fairies causing all the disasters happening throughout the book is the big question. *I* think, though I could be wrong!, that Purcell was trying to demonstrate how a person comes to believe in supernatural causes for the horrible things that happen to us. What happened to Creeda was so particularly heinous that her aunt was just at a total loss as to how to possibly even begin to explain to her why she was abducted so she told her it was the fairies. So this instilled in Creeda an extreme, pathological fear of “fairies” whom she equated with the people responsible for her abduction and for what happened to her while she was kept (presumably, per my interpretation) in a brothel. This is why she was driven to extremes to try to protect Rosewyn from a similar fate and why they all believed only beautiful girls were at risk for abduction.

Which in turn was a fear and belief system transmitted to Louise after she experienced the severe trauma caused by everything that ended up happening to her in the book. It was just easier to believe that it was fairies, that her loved ones would come back for her, than it was to try to recover from the grief, which, omfg after what she went through, you get it. 😬

And then similarly on to Hester as well after everything *she’d* experienced in her life... although, I’m not sure if she clearly believed in the fairies in the end so much as she was just desperate for a way to undo the harm she believed she had caused and in her desperation and despair aligned with Rosewyn’s belief system as a way to help her.

But the whole time the story is unfolding and Purcell is demonstrating all of these terrible things happening to all the characters and just how bleak and hopeless their lives seem to get, even the reader begins to wonder well, *is* it fairies doing all this??? I mean... what’s happening is just so so horrendous like... how could this all be natural? How could life really just be like this? Also Hester presents as something of an unreliable character at times clearly dealing with some psychological issues but in the end I think she was just a victim of her circumstances and there was nothing inherently evil or even cursed about her. But as I said that was just my interpretation!

Oh wow though that last scene. I got real chills.

Just an extremely powerful, well told, well written story. Really very impressive. I am so excited to read The Corset in the spring and then her newest book coming out this year in the fall (even though it’s coming out in March I have to wait until September bc I’m collecting the paperback editions). 

 

“The cliff face suffered; that was why it looked so stern. Wave after wave, blow after blow, relentless, interminable.” 

 

TW // abduction and sexual abuse of a child alluded to off the page, graphic descriptions of consumption, miscarriage, death of family members to illness, depression, severe grief, hallucinations, psychosis leading to violent actions, murder, 

 

Spoiler vis-a-vis “does the dog die in this one?”:

so there is a dog in this book but he doesn’t die until the very end and his death isn’t on the page, it is mentioned only in passing, and it could have been a natural death, although the reader is kind of left to draw their own conclusions...

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Violence

Moderate: Vomit

Minor: Child abuse, Kidnapping, and Pedophilia