Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

Das blinde Licht, by Benjamín Labatut

7 reviews

aliced's review against another edition

dark informative fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship

lipka's review against another edition

dark emotional informative tense fast-paced

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

        Un verdor terrible is... blue, black, and devastating. It's a strange moment: the reality and unreality folded together, nonlinear and noneuclidean. You really could blot out the sun with this book. Hold it just high enough—the shadow it casts is a dark, ancient thing.

        The chapters fling themselves in all directions at breakneck speed. A comet, and a coma. "What wind drags it off with the fury of an angel cast out from heaven, falling, and falling, and falling?" Only the tail end of it can tell.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Animal cruelty, Genocide, Suicide, Suicide attempt, War, Medical content, Sexual content, Child death, and Death

Moderate: Mental illness, Sexism, Dysphoria, Antisemitism, Drug use, and Murder

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Excrement, Rape, Vomit, Homophobia, Forced institutionalization, Pedophilia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Xenophobia

solanum's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Sexual harassment, Animal death, Gore, Pedophilia, and Sexual content

Moderate: Death of parent, Suicide, Vomit, Death, Excrement, and War

albernikolauras's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a complicated book that wavers on the line between nonfiction and fiction. It starts out near nonfiction and then as we get further in time and into science, the line blurs further. It's a book that plays with how famous scientists reached through reality to pull their theories into fruition. It's disturbing, discomfiting, near hallucinogenic, and I don't know what to think of part of it.

It's something that still haunts me, and it brings to question the morality of a scientist entangled in his worth as a scientist in the times of war that these men lived through. It's a quick read, but it does require some background knowledge on different physicists that made key quantum discoveries. I would recommend it, but definitely look at some of the content warnings.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Drug use, Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, Mental illness, and Death

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Antisemitism

Minor: War

turtleghost's review against another edition

dark informative inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Absolutely fascinating book, the storytelling was masterful, well done to the author and translator! Would hugely recommend to anyone interested in physics/mathematics/chemistry or history around the world wars- but I would not recommend if you are disturbed by imagery of chemical warfare, mental breakdowns or the romanticisation of a minor. Definitely challenging themes, but this book explores the dark history behind the discoveries that have created the world as we know it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Death, and War

Moderate: Mental illness, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, and Child death

Minor: Suicide, Rape, Pedophilia, Excrement, and Vomit

whatsnewpussykat's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Antisemitism

Minor: Suicide

fugitive_words's review against another edition

4.25

Benjamin Labatut is devastatingly clever with his blend of fiction and fact.  Describing the tortured lives of mathematicians and physicians from Schwarzschild and Mochizuki to de Broglie and Schrödinger, he uses fiction to round out the details of their biographies and imagine in what conditions such minds attempted to comprehend the rules of reality. I can’t pretend to have understood all, if any, of the mathematical ideas in question, but Labatut makes the overarching excitement and fear around the limits and new depths of physics viscerally tangible. Would recommend for lovers of maths, science, and literature alike. 

As Mark Haddon has said of the work, “it feels as if he has invented an entirely new genre.” Labatut uses the blend of imagination and reality to truly make us confront and question what happens When We Cease to Understand the World. 

'Blurb': A work of fiction and biography following the lives of mathematicians and scientists as they grapple with new theories and discoveries and their sometimes incomprehensible consequences.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Genocide, and Antisemitism

Moderate: Medical trauma and Ableism