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A review by seawarrior
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a magical tale of a cursed childhood, which begins and ends as a horror story about the theft of bodily autonomy. While this book is an engaging read, the subject matter also made it a taxing one. By the end of the book I felt almost angry that I had stayed with the Fortuna women so long only to never see them vindicated. Yet our ability to read this story is a vindication in itself. As readers, we grant Stella what she as spent her entire life searching for: understanding, empathy and shared rage.
While this story is fictional, it is written with so much detail and winding family mythologies that it feels real. My favorite part of the book was imagining Stella's nature-rich and independent life in Ievoli, but I felt the chapters about her young adulthood dragged on to the point of frustration, and the story of her adulthood was surprisingly brief. However, this briefness may have been an intentional decision to illustrate her loss of passion for life. I don't doubt that there are many women who lived pieces of Stella's story, and intimately know its pain. The Fortuna women were courageous, capable characters with varied strengths. Yet the world reduced them to property of their fathers and husbands, a fate which Stella desperately tried to escape but had no means to. I'm not sure I would recommend this book to others. While it is a beautifully written and honest portrait of Stella the survivor, her adulthood is so dismal that I questioned why I was putting myself through envisioning these moments in her life at all. I leave the book wondering "What was the point?" Yet as Grames states through her narrator, "of course there never is any point, but until you think that thought for the first time it doesn’t matter that there isn’t".
While this story is fictional, it is written with so much detail and winding family mythologies that it feels real. My favorite part of the book was imagining Stella's nature-rich and independent life in Ievoli, but I felt the chapters about her young adulthood dragged on to the point of frustration, and the story of her adulthood was surprisingly brief. However, this briefness may have been an intentional decision to illustrate her loss of passion for life. I don't doubt that there are many women who lived pieces of Stella's story, and intimately know its pain. The Fortuna women were courageous, capable characters with varied strengths. Yet the world reduced them to property of their fathers and husbands, a fate which Stella desperately tried to escape but had no means to. I'm not sure I would recommend this book to others. While it is a beautifully written and honest portrait of Stella the survivor, her adulthood is so dismal that I questioned why I was putting myself through envisioning these moments in her life at all. I leave the book wondering "What was the point?" Yet as Grames states through her narrator, "of course there never is any point, but until you think that thought for the first time it doesn’t matter that there isn’t".
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Incest, Pedophilia, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Infertility, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Death of parent, Racism, Xenophobia, Death, Drug abuse, and War