Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Das achte Leben (für Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili

8 reviews

wlarianna's review against another edition

dark hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Emotional abuse, Death, Rape, Homophobia, Pregnancy, Torture, Alcoholism, Violence, Toxic relationship, Suicide, Miscarriage, and Infertility

Moderate: Police brutality, Deportation, Abortion, Addiction, Bullying, Cancer, and Death of parent

katewhite77's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense 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

5.0

This is an amazing book, but not for everyone.

This book is quite a commitment in both length and graphic content so won't be for everyone, but if you feel able to commit then it will give you a really good story whilst also teaching you something of the history of the USSR. In particular through the eyes of thè female line of a fictitious Georgian family.

However it really does not shy away from the brutality of life behind the iron curtain and tells a tragic tale in many particularly given the geopolitical situation we find ourselves in at the moment. 

Please proceed with exstreame caution if you are struggling with your mental health. I don't know whether I would have started the journey had I been fully armed with the facts before doing so but I was too gripped to stop once I had started. A masterpiece.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Bullying, Terminal illness, Sexual assault, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Grief, Drug use, Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Colonisation, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Violence, War, Torture, Cancer, Child death, Death, Sexual violence, Murder, Genocide, and Drug abuse

sara_n's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Murder, Suicide attempt, Grief, Rape, and Violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Drug abuse, War, Addiction, Drug use, Alcoholism, Blood, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Alcohol, Death, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Pregnancy, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Police brutality, Eating disorder, Bullying, Cancer, and Pedophilia

chia_ie's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

this book took me almost 2 months to read. but it was so worth it. i have this feeling of like … what do i do now? 

the ending was so good. the very few past pages. so, so good. the characters were all so flawed, so human. but i loved them all regardless. it was as if i actually knew them. the stories were surreal, yet gutting to read, because i fear that some of the events that took place are not far from the reality of life back then. 

if you have the patience, i would absolutely recommend this book. the one downside is that i didn’t find it to be a book i could relax with. i had to be focused to work out the connections between characters and such. i even ended up drawing family trees to help myself 

this book was great. i’ll miss the Jashis.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Abortion, War, Suicide, Police brutality, Miscarriage, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Murder, Death, Torture, Addiction, Violence, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Sexism, Cancer, Alcohol, Grief, and Alcoholism

eliicapss's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Addiction, Death, Emotional abuse, Police brutality, Alcoholism, Cancer, Medical content, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Murder, Misogyny, Homophobia, Sexual harassment, Rape, Drug abuse, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, and Suicide

machenn's review against another edition

emotional reflective tense slow-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion and Rape

Moderate: Alcohol, Death, Grief, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Blood, Violence, and War

Minor: Cancer, Homophobia, and Bullying

ssreadsintranslation's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Toxic relationship and Suicide

Minor: Abortion, Cancer, Drug use, Drug abuse, Genocide, Homophobia, Infidelity, Infertility, Misogyny, Outing, and Ableism

sherbertwells's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

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

2.0

“Despite my years of struggling both for and with this country, I have not managed to replace it, to drive it out of me like an evil spirit that beset me. No ritual purification, no repression mechanism has yet been of any assistance. Because everywhere I went, travelling further and further from my country, I was searching for the squandered, scattered, wasted, unused love I’d left behind” (10)

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili is first and foremost a labor of love: that is, it is about love and it is a labor to read. Second, it is a work of Georgian history, written in German and longlisted for the International Booker prize in 2020 for its translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. Third, it is a entry in the loose subgenre of family sagas that represents the history of a nation with a handful of quirky and tragic individuals. Each of these identities—romantic, national and literary—contributes to the character of the 930-page tome. But none is sufficient to save it from its own weight.

Haratischvili shares a background with her narrator, a Georgian woman living in Germany. But The Eighth Life is not about the migrant experience. It is a chronicle of the Red Century in Georgia, from the 1917 Bolshevik revolution to the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian war, through the eyes of a well-off Georigan family. National identity is a point of pride for some characters, but also a source of shame: Soviet tyrants Josef Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, nicknamed “the Generalissiumus” and “the Little Big Man,” learned cruelty in “the most beautiful place on earth” (7).

As you might expect, this book is dark and filled with rape, torture and other tragedies. This is the 20th century, after all; no one comes through unscathed. What makes The Eighth Life stand out from other multigenerational epics—Middlesex, Midnight’s Children, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pachinko come to mind—is its tough-as-nails women. From the wrinkled Stasia to the apathetic Niza, each heiress of the prominent Jashi family learns to weather her particular challenges with courage and delicious, possibly-cursed hot chocolate.

The reader is not so fortunate.

The Eighth Life induces in its readers a disillusionment akin to the failure of Communism itself. The first pages of are full of hope, and the middle has a snappy and dramatic plot with a clearly-defined enemy. I particularly enjoyed learning about the character of Giorgi Alania, a family friend with a mysterious past. But as the ninth or tenth sex scene popped up like a toxic mushroom, I realized there was no way the ending could possibly be satisfying. By the 1990s, I felt as drained as a postcommunist pension.

But despite the exhausting tone that persists in many chapters, certain parts of this novel are a joy to read. Each chapter begins with a quote from history, with sources ranging from William Shakespeare to Anna Akmatova to the slogans on propaganda posters. The translations of these quotes were quite beautiful and often sharper than the prose that followed them. There is also a lovely passage where Niza, the narrator, recounts her childhood experience of communism:

“For Daria and me, the Soviet Union meant: constant funeral marches and processions as aged gentlemen of the Communist Party were carried to their graves; carnations everywhere, macabre spectacles broadcast on all the television channels. For us, the Soviet Union meant: endless summer camps, Pioneer neckerchiefs. Tea plantations, apiaries, and kolkoɀes. White knee-socks from China, tapestries of hunting scenes on the walls, Mishka Na Severe chocolates, and Lagidze’s tarragon lemonade. Our grandfather’s GAZ-13, the brightly coloured blocks of Plasticine with the frog on them, yellow Krya-Krya children’s shampoo, Grandfather’s Start shaving cream, the talcum powder in the bathroom cabinet with the cat’s head on the pot, which we weren’t allowed to use. Hygiene body lotion and Stasia’s Red Moscow perfume, which smelled of old people and was enough to give you a headache. The odorless brown bath-soap that was actually called ‘Bath Soap’” (631)

It’s absolutely fabulous: even the most ambitious and idealistic communist regime is remembered as a deluge of stuff! That passage and the next few pages are grounds for the Booker International, were they not surrounded by 900 pages of extrania.

If you are looking for a challenge and a history lesson, this might be the book for you. The Eighth Life, hailed as “The Georgian War and Peace,” promises everything. But sometimes everything is a bit too much.

“Live through all wars. Cross all borders. To you I dedicate all gods and all rosaries, all burnings, all decapitated hopes, all stories. Break through them. Because you have the means to do it, Brilka. The eight—remember it. All of us will always be interwoven in this number and will always be able to listen to each other, down through the centuries” (6)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Alcoholism, Torture, Medical content, Medical trauma, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Mass/school shootings, and Gun violence

Moderate: Abortion, Addiction, Sexism, Religious bigotry, Misogyny, Miscarriage, Infidelity, Infertility, Homophobia, Cancer, and Child abuse

Minor: Antisemitism, Fatphobia, and Cannibalism