Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Carry by Toni Jensen

7 reviews

katharina90's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

5.0

This memoir is so, so beautifully written. 

The content is sometimes difficult to stomach, as one would expect, but the lyrical writing kept me glued to this book.

The essays are tied together by an interesting assortment of thematic and stylistic threads, incl. gun violence, birds, the importance of language, and the oft-repeated phrase "in this, our America". 

"It’s okay, I’ve learned, to love the things that make you, even if they also are the things that unmake you."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Drug abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Mental illness, Racism, Police brutality, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, and Colonisation

Minor: Rape, Suicide, Kidnapping, and Murder

snowiceblackfruit77's review against another edition

dark emotional informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Misogyny, Racism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

cuddlygryphon's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Dementia, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Mental illness, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Cancer, Child abuse, Genocide, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Suicide, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, and Sexual harassment

sarah984's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

Essay collections are always hard to rate for me. Some of the essays were brilliant, searing looks at the meaning of violence, but others had clearly been published elsewhere before and didn't fit in as well with the rest of the content. The parts about COVID felt kind of tacked on and strange.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Police brutality, Medical content, Dementia, Mass/school shootings, Murder, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Trafficking, Stalking, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Minor: Drug abuse, Hate crime, Rape, and Suicide

mscalls's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Police brutality, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Stalking, and Murder

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Animal cruelty

cristy's review

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

4.5

A plethora of content warnings here. J speaks in depth about not only her personal trauma, but of our collective trauma; her people, her family, and our country as it stands today. The text moves around as she does, including to University of Central Florida and Orlando itself. The Pulse shooting is specifically addressed.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicide, Police brutality, Dementia, and Mass/school shootings

Moderate: Medical trauma

Minor: Alcoholism, Death, Drug abuse, and Grief

thebookteaseblog's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

This memoir in essays reminded me so much of another favorite: I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell. Both are stunningly, poetically written, with a focus on extraordinary and everyday brushes with death. Jensen is a born storyteller, someone whose curiosity about language and the effects of words comes through clearly in her writing. I fell head over heels for her narrative style from the first page. It feels overly simplistic to describe Carry as a book about violence - it is about that, it's true, but Carry is also about family, and place, and survival. It puts what's happening in (to use Jensen's refrain, our America) in a larger context. In her essays, she reminds us that as long as this country chooses to view gun violence as a problem that cannot be solved, as something that just is, that the violence against Black and Indigenous people, the violence against women and children, the countless almosts, the too-many-to-name violent acts that are carried out every day will continue. She reminds us that we cannot untangle the threads of the violence against animals and the violence against women, the violence of the past and the violence of the present, the everyday violence and the headline making violence, the violence of the individual and the violence of the government, because it is all connected. I hope that one day people will look back on stories like those in Carry and they will seem unrecognizable. In the meantime, they are an anthem, a warning, a question.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Sexual assault, Violence, Xenophobia, and Trafficking