Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

2 reviews

pacifickat's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.75

I truly love the style of book that feels like a collection of short fiction interconnected around a central event or place. Plague of doves is just that. Each different first-person narrated section could be it's own freestanding short story, captivating and lyrical. However, when placed side by side, or compared horizontally through time, their interconnected elements create a synthesized story of a town full of imperfect and interesting people, people struggling with cultural identities, family ties, character flaws, deep traumas, a complicated web of community history, and even a few gruesome murders. 

Erdrich's prose is at times breathtaking, while the stories between oscillate between the mundanities of everyday life and some truly horrendous secrets. She deftly mixes slices of life with instances of intense longing and even insanity, tales of extreme horror alongside acts of survival. Her strikingly hyper-realistic and sumtuously detailed first-person narratives are occasionally interrupted by haunting accounts of magical realism. I look forward to reading more of her unique style of literary fiction in the future.

Upon further reflection, I am wondering if the town name of Pluto, and a character theorizing about Hell not being that hot or eternal, hint at an underlying theme of the book. Is Pluto a sort of Hell? Many of the characters possess or portray the seven deadly sins of Catholicism, or major transgressions of the 10 Commandments. Since a complicated relationship with Catholicism is a major element of the town's culture and history, I wonder if that's something Erdrich was playing with, even down to the symbolism of Cain and Abel played out between brothers competing greedily over a valuable violin and sabotaging one another to predictable end. If greed is the circle of Hell where Dante truly began a downward spiral in The Divine Commedy, perhaps it is a similar case here. Maybe Hell is other people, as is so often the case in the town of Pluto. Perhaps everything ends cold and empty, a final end to a dying town, and the final circle of Hell.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Infidelity, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Bullying, Misogyny, Violence, and Blood

Minor: Child death, Car accident, and Fire/Fire injury

lynching

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religious cult

lorenag5's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective sad fast-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism