Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

22 reviews

deenmachine's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Love a short grief book. Often that's all I really need or can handle. This one doesn't capture it all but it isn't meant to. A loving and bittersweet reflection on her father and what it is to lose someone you really, really care about

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lbelow's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

I started reading this book hoping to find some guidance in navigating grief. I didn't find that, but Adichie, eloquent as ever, gave me something else: companionship in grief. I enjoyed reading about her father. It is clear how much she loved him. 

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honeyvoiced's review against another edition

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sad fast-paced

4.0


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bealittlebrave's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

A personal account more than general musings on grief. But then again grief feels deeply personal, and somehow it's universal in that.

I see myself returning to this.

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nebraskanwriter's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring sad fast-paced

5.0


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mscalls's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5


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anger566's review against another edition

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emotional sad fast-paced

3.0


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adhdru's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad

5.0

"To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then to be told to turn to memories. Rather than succor, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, "This is what you will never have again".

It feels strange to rate a book that is so much about emotion, pain, longing —grief. A book that is so personal, and yet so universal in this times of global pandemic.

There is so much I could relate to even though I'm on the other side of the world from where she writes, although my family is in a different continent from hers, despite losing a different parental figure. Reading this book reminded me of a quote from "The Deep", by Rivers Solomon:  “What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.” —in a way, reading Notes on Grief reminded me that I belong to grief and it belongs to me, and to the many others who have had the joy to love and the agony to mourn.

Quotes that felt like my soul was ripped out of my body, exposed and then retold to me by someone infinitely more eloquent than me:


"[...] utterly unraveling, screaming and pounding the floor. The news is like a vicious uprooting. I am yanked away from the world I have known since childhood. And I am resistant"

"Our Zoom call is beyond surreal, all of us weeping and weeping and weeping, in different parts of the world"

"[...] laughter is a part of grief. Laughter is tightly braided into our family argot, and now we laugh remembering [...], but somewhere in the background there is a haze of disbelief. The laughter trails off. The laughter becomes tears and becomes sadness and becomes rage."

"It was so fast, too fast. It was not supposed to happen like this, not like a malicious surprise, not during a pandemic that has shut down the world."

"Often, too, there is the urge to run and run, to hide. But I cannot alwys run, and each time I am forced to squarely confront my grief [...] I feel a shimmering panic."

"I back away from condolences. People are kind, people mean well, but knowing this does not make their words rankle less."

"'Never' has come to stay. 'Never' feels so unfairly punitive. For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstreched for things that are no longer there."

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jenniferpalmblad's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.25


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annabunce's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0


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