Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

She Came from Mariupol by Natascha Wodin

2 reviews

rieviolet's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.5

I started this book without any expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. I know almost nothing about this chapter in the history of Eastern Europe, so it was a really eye-opening reading experience, if extremely sad and harrowing.

I think that if you like family sagas in your fiction, you might like this memoir as well. There is an element of mystery as you gradually discover, alongside the author, her family history that keeps you engaged and that can also surprise you. 
I liked the writing style and there were some sections of nature writing that I appreciated particularly, and usually I am really not a big fan of nature writing. 
The author also includes many different means of narration (e-mails and letters, a family member's diary, extracts from other texts, even photographs), and this makes for a varied and more engaging storytelling. 

The web of familial relationships gets progressively more complex and it can become a little confusing (especially because a family tree is not included, at least in my digital copy), so that at times I struggled to remeber who someone was and how they were related to someone else and I had to just go with the flow.

Also, there are many brutal sections that are hard to get through, and I completely understand their presence in the book given the subject matter, but I found some parts a bit too graphic in their details, and unnecessarily so

for example, I don't think that including a scene where, after a bombing, her maternal aunt is carring a young man's intestines is going to add anything vital to the narrative.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Gore, Mental illness, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, War, and Deportation

Moderate: Alcoholism, Gun violence, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Antisemitism, Medical content, Cannibalism, Sexual harassment, and Classism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Incest, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Blood, Vomit, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

callisto_ursus's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Racism, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Death of parent, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Incest, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Antisemitism, Cannibalism, Murder, and Alcohol

Minor: Rape and Abortion