Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Zpověď lišáka by Jordy Rosenberg

29 reviews

felishacb's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

This novel is an experimental, wild ride. The story features a trans and/or intersex character and is told by a trans scholar and professor. The basis of the novel is the true legend of a historical figure, a white English man named Jack Sheppard whom I had never heard of. In CONFESSIONS, Rosenberg, a trans author, queers the story and imagines Jack as a gender-expansive thief. 

Footnotes tell the story of the narrator of sorts who is translating and interpreting the tale. They are also dealing with a faceless entity who wants to control the translation and treats Jacks's transness with an otherness. These layers give Rosenberg the opportunity to comment on queerness, as well as class, colonialism, and power. 

Another main character based on reality is Bess who in this book is an Asian sex worker. Bess offers a safe place for Jack and teaches him more about class revolution by sharing her own family's tragic story. Her lived experience could connect with Jack's own experience of class oppression (and queer repression) and inform him on how it intersects with racism. 

Although it is fiction, this book serves as a powerful reminder that trans people (and people of color) have always been here and have always been the main characters in their stories even if their history is lost or never told. 

Towards the last third of the novel, I did find myself not picking this up as much. But the authors voice and perspective kept me wanting to see how this story ended and what nuggets of truth they would share.

From the book: "All history should be the history of how we exceeded our own limits."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Confinement, Genocide, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Racism, Torture, and Kidnapping

Minor: Grief

opossumble's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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: Confinement, Gore, Racism, Sexual content, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cursing, Drug use, Slavery, Excrement, Vomit, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

cosypuck's review against another edition

4.5

I much preferred the narrative about Jack & Bess to the footnote narrative about Dr Voth, but the latter didn't spoil the book for me and in some places did add to it. I didn't like that

the collective group of queer editors

wasn't expanded on - for the sake of how much it was touched on it could have been left out, for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gore, Blood, Medical content, and Dysphoria

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Transphobia

quinnyquinnquinn's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Transphobia

Moderate: Racism, Blood, and Medical content

Minor: Child abuse

caseythereader's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Thank you to One World Books for the free copy of this book.

 - CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX is one of the strangest, most fascinating books I’ve ever read. I loved the structure, with the body of the book being the “lost manuscript” and the footnotes being the professor telling his story alongside the manuscript.
- There is so much going on here, I hardly know where to start. Everything from the historical erasure of trans people to the prison industrial complex is pinpointed and torn down in a frenzy.
- For me, things got a bit muddled at the end of the book, but overall this book is well worth the trip there. Do pay attention to those content warnings though, as it’s pretty grossly graphic throughout. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

julianship's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense 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

3.75 with the frame narrative, 4.5 if you skip the footnotes (shocking coming from me!) I held off on reviewing this for a while, because I wanted to percolate on it. I actually started reading the book way back in January in audio format, was moving through it fairly slowly, got concussed, and simply could not get back into it. Physical format was much more successful! In part, I think, the audio format does not handle the extensive and discursive footnotes particularly well, and in part because the beginning of the book is heavily concerned with Dr. Voth, and I simply didn't like him very much. I've read about a lot of sad-sack transmasc characters this year, and only some of them are enjoyable. He got a lot more bearable in print! 
That being said, the narrative of Jack Sheppard is well-done; Rosenberg nails a particular sort of 18th-century cadence (possibly anachronistic; I don't really care.) Jack's narration is as slippery as the thief himself, both poetic and crude. The end of the book is spectacular, and Bess's discussion of the Fens is lovely. 
Even in print, though, I found myself wishing the footnotes weren't there at all - as much as I enjoy a metanarrative, I think there's enough metanarrative present in the "18th century" portion itself, which touches on environmental destruction, the carceral state, the new calcification of racial categories, and transgender lives and loves. I don't think the book actually needed our modern day Dr. Voth in order to make the narrative speak to the present; it does that just fine on its own without the frame narrative, and I ended up getting distracted trying to track the details of his near-future academic dystopia. 
So, overall: great book, loved Jack and Bess, (shockingly for me) could have done without the frame!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, and Medical content

katiewhocanread's review against another edition

challenging funny fast-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? No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, and Medical content

Moderate: Deadnaming and Racism

Minor: Mental illness and Racial slurs

carbs666's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

Deeply researched and lovingly crafted, this book is like nothing I've ever read before. Confessions layered on top of confessions, the inherent queerness of the disobedient archive, funny and insightful and personal footnotes, unreliable and fantastical and multiplicitous narration, a utopia outside of time, an escape. It's good. You have to read it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Sexual content, Police brutality, Medical content, Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body horror, Death, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, and Medical content

laurajsmith's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content and Medical trauma

Minor: Body horror, Sexual content, Blood, Police brutality, and Alcohol

meremeth's review against another edition

adventurous lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racial slurs, Blood, Medical content, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

An extremely thoroughly and passionately researched retelling of Jack Shepard through a queer lens. This might not be a perfect book, but it is incredibly well done in certain aspects. I would recommend to anyone looking for good representation of queer love and trans masculine coming of age.