Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

18 reviews

uss_mary_shelley's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, and Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Mental illness, and Excrement

clemmiem's review

emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder and Colonisation

Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, and Vomit

Minor: Child death

dannythestreet's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad

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

3.75

I find it interesting that we barely get to hear the main character's point of view, her thoughts or feelings. She is mostly just describing things as they are. I think it's characteristic of the way she was brought up, taught not to be a burden, to obey and do as told without complaining or thinking too hard about it. As a contrast we have Nyasha (the best character in the book) who is being endlessly abused by her father, yet she cannot keep quiet, refuses to be "good".  What's happening to her at the end is heartbreaking yet unfortunately not surprising, he is a victim of this system same as all of them are.

Overall, the book offers some helpful insight into life in Zimbabwe, blackness, womanhood, poverty, education, family relationship and more

It's not my favourite book but definitely worth a read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, and Sexism

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Self harm, Violence, Grief, and Pregnancy

agnela's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Violence, Pregnancy, and Colonisation

torihope98's review against another edition

emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Racism, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, and Physical abuse

Minor: Vomit, Religious bigotry, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

hi_saac's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Eating disorder, and Colonisation

Minor: Miscarriage and Vomit

georgiabritton's review against another edition

emotional reflective 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Eating disorder, and Racism

linguisticali's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

3.5

Good but not really for me. On enjoyment alone I'd rate it lower but I want to give it fair credit. I'm not into coming of age stories and stories where women relentlessly suffer at the hands of terrible patriarchal men (valid, important, etc, but I find it so bleak and tiring). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, and Eating disorder

now_booking's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

It’s hard for me to rate this book because on the one hand, I really resonated with this story and the characters and as an African, it was a story told with a lot of heart and nuance and reflexivity. We get the benefit of Tambu’s older self editorially providing wisdom and reflection as she looks back at her younger self. And this is helpful in casting Tambu as a sympathetic character because with time and with age, there’s clearly been a lot of analyses of how she sees things. But despite her promising start in this story, I couldn’t help but feel that she wasn’t really the main character in her own narration. 

The premise is that when Tambu loses her brother, who happens to be her nemesis, she inherits his opportunity to move in with their wealthy uncle to pursue her dream of an education and a better life for her family. But she finds that life isn’t as perfect as she believed in the household of her god-like uncle and aunt, and she finds that in the pursuit of her dreams, she may be losing her identity.

This was set up like it was going to be Tambu’s coming of age story, but it didn’t really deliver on that expectation. In the end, it was kind of a collection of incidents and events about family expectations, gender inequity and coloniality and the legacies of compromising oneself for the Western gaze in order to be successful enough to look after one’s family. Yet even though my expectation for a connected story about Tambu wasn’t met, and even though this was very “slice of life,” I think it articulated experiences that were very realistic and pertinent to a Zimbabwean and more broadly, African, experience. The character development was stellar, the scenes and reflections were on point, the scenarios and ways of thinking resonated. I could see the experiences of my own family, friends and neighbours in the grievances and hurts and expectations and hopes and responsibilities that lay in this book. I loved the complex family dynamics and the imperfect characters. If I’m removing one star, it’s because this did not feel entirely cohesive to me. I enjoyed the stories but I did feel it felt a little incomplete and “so what” at the end. It left me as a reader wondering what the author wanted to accomplish with this story which ended as abruptly as it started, kind of in the middle. The focus was very much on the themes and the characters demonstrating the themes, but there wasn’t really an overarching plot or a main story. I could enjoy the pieces of story and the slices of experience and these are themes I care about, so it worked for me. But I also felt like this wasn’t really anchored and it only worked for me because I liked older Tambu’s editorializing voice. The story wasn’t allowed to tell itself without older Tambu/the author’s voice inserting itself into my consciousness to make decisions on my feelings about the story for me. Indeed, my favourite character was the peripheral Aunty Lucia, whose boldness, wisdom, open sexuality and cunning made her engaging and powerful in a world where the women were subdued by nervous conditions. Specific to this edition, I thought it was a strange choice to include a spoiler-ridden introduction at the start of this book and I think that could spoil the book for people who are vehemently anti-spoiler.

My understanding is that this is the first book in a trilogy of books featuring Tambu which might explain why this felt so abrupt and somewhat incomplete.  But I also felt like this didn’t end on a cliffhanger or with any express trigger to pick up the next book. That said, overall, I really liked the story and would like to see what older Tambu’s foreshadowing will lead to, so I plan to check out the other books in the series. I recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Grief, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Classism

Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Fatphobia, and Physical abuse

xh_reads's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Eating disorder, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, and Sexism