Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

3 reviews

ekcd_'s review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Cancer, Death, and Drug use

Minor: Body horror

skudiklier's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

This book was really interesting, and for once I kind of guessed some of the twists/reveals ahead of time. I kept expecting the book to get suddenly more intense or sad, and though of course it was sad, I never came close to crying. It's almost like the mystery distracted me from how sad it was. But! Overall it was written well and it's a powerful book. Not sure I'd recommend it, but I definitely don't regret reading it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Infertility, Forced institutionalization, and Medical content

Moderate: Ableism, Cancer, Cursing, Genocide, Homophobia, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Grief, Medical trauma, and Murder

Minor: Drug use, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Vomit, and Stalking

nepheloma's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

3.75

This is a very interesting book that I personally interpreted as an allegory for the course of life.  The main question it focuses on is: why do we do anything if there's no hope, or at least nothing more than this life, in the end? It's basically a reflection on the absurdity that characterizes our existence through the experiences of three very, very human characters. They are all very flawed, sometimes even to an aggravating extent, but I found it kind of comforting how openly their flaws were explored and how they kept being connected, not despite these flaws, but even alongside them.

What I personally realized through this book was that we keep on living life because that's the core of our humanity: to create and to exist, no matter how absurd our existence might really be. We're not different from the students at all -our existence is a path straight towards death, just like theirs. But we keep carrying on, because what matters is that we live until we die.

I think that the only thing that I didn't enjoy very much was the writing style of this book. I do understand that it is designed to reflect that the story is told orally, but I found it repetitive. Sometimes, there was foreshadowing that was too obvious or even repeatedly mentioned, which made me feel that the set ups the writer wanted to create were a little not too strongly built. At times, I also found the narration somewhat emotionless, especially in the beginning of the book, but even though this bogged me, I have to admit that it did contribute to the general morose, yet hopeful, atmosphere that the book had.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Terminal illness, and Medical content

Minor: Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug use, Infertility, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy