Reviews tagging 'Dementia'

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

2 reviews

mrlsdevos's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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menomica's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No
“There is no living thing on God’s Earth that doesn’t come to know pain sometime.”

This book broke my heart.

Yaa Gyasi is so amazing at describing trauma without coming off as gratuitous. She manages to capture the multiple aspects of pain and hurt, and even how at certain level you begin to normalize it.
The way Gifty talks about the trauma that she experienced as a preteen—watching her brother strung out on her lap, her mothers attempted suicide—you really get the sense that though she understands the harrowing nature of her experiences, she hasn’t really given herself room to reflect on how she experienced these things at such a young age and how that affected her.


I think this book is very beautiful, especially if you go in not viewing it with the expectation of a narrative structure. A lot of the storlines don’t tie up in neat bows, they simply end, come to their own natural conclusions. And to me, that feels very much like how things happen in real life.

Anyway, I think this book is so amazing. Definitely recommend.
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