Reviews tagging Toxic relationship

Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin

66 reviews

juleserenity's review against another edition

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emotional 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

4.5

Struggling to give this a full 5 because of how sad this made me. i I will always love Baldwin’s work. 
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renniewest's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-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

4.0

“I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.”

this novel is crushing in its depiction of the complexities of human conditions, love, mental illness, etc… it’s made me the kind of melancholy that sticks with you for a while. 
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jazzy_t's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-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? It's complicated

4.5

Good book. An influential book of its time. 

I enjoy reading about a side of lgbt+ I maybe haven't really read before. Paris in 1960s ish. 

I felt the characters had a lot of depth and you connect to them but also become angry at them. They most definitely aren't perfect. I feel the author added this to the characters beautifully. 

James Balwin the author is an amazing intreting man who deserves to be remembered more than his is currently.

Enjoyed the read, would recommend. 
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jmcampbell57's review against another edition

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

4.5

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shoohoob's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • 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

5.0

I just finished reading this book and I already wish I could read it again for the first time.

Giovanni’s Room comes to me at a very interesting point in my life. I resonate so much with David - searching for “home” and wanting to return to place that doesn’t exist anymore. Just like him, I want to understand myself and what I want but am uncertain on how to get there. I don’t know if this book helped in figuring things out, but it resonated with me in a way I didn’t realize I longed for. 

I’m so glad I read it. I think this book has aged so well and is still accessible as a classic. I think everyone should read it!
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oliverlang's review against another edition

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

5.0

It feels rude to give this book anything other than 5 stars. It made me feel so many different types of ways; I felt joy in moments and heartache in others. Another book with unlikeable characters but profoundly human ones.

I'm just going to share some of my favourite excerpts in lieu of a wordy review:

'Love him,' said Jacques, with vehemence, love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty-they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better-forever-if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.' He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. 'You play it safe long enough,' he said, in a different tone, 'and you'll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever-like me.' And he finished his cognac, ringing his glass slightly on the bar to attract the attention of Madame Clothilde.

I smiled. "Things my father never told me.' 'Somebody,' said Jacques, 'your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour-and in the oddest places!-for the lack of it.' And then: 'Here comes your baby. Sois sage. Sois chic.'

I began to see that, while what was happening to me was not so strange as it would have comforted me to believe, yet it was strange beyond belief. It was not really so strange, so unprecedented, though voices deep within me boomed, For shame! For shame! that I should be so abruptly, so hideously entangled with a boy; what was strange was that this was but one tiny aspect of the dreadful human tangle, occurring everywhere, without end, forever.

TW: Suicide Reference

I did not know what to do or where to go. I found myself at last along the river, slowly going home.

And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it-it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do with that storm, that far-off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.
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alsoapples's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-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

4.5

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lynxpardinus's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad

4.75

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typewriterworries's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-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

4.75

Giovanni’s Room was my first true exposure to Baldwin’s work (I hate that it was so late but at least it was, nonetheless) and I can’t recommend it enough. That said, I’ll do my best to keep this brief.

Giovanni’s Room follows the story of David, a young man who’s fallen in love with both a young woman named Hella and another young man named Giovanni. We read about, what some might call, a tumultuous love affair and a constant question of identity. Oh, and of course, there’s the unspoken tension between David and his father.

Baldwin’s depiction of the internal struggle is masterful without being overtly extravagant. It’s a layered experience that deals with set against the backdrop of 1950s Paris with one consistent theme flowing through: Home is another person.

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missbrookss's review against another edition

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

5.0

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