Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

8 reviews

ekgranstro's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I unironically think this book has changed me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Death, Incest, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Police brutality, Grief, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Pregnancy, and War

Minor: Abandonment

libellumartinae's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.75

Alrightie, this book was... intense. beautifully so, but I can't help but deny that partnering this book with another was a bad choice in my part that inevitably staunched my enjoyment of it. One of the things, in fact, I struggle with the most is a sort of initial confusion that didn't diminish throughout the reading experience as I tried to piece together the author's world. It's also true that as I have noted from other reviews not much happens throughout this book and this brought it to be a boring in some parts.

But gods! the whole architecture and meaning of this is utterly fabolous, alongside the knowledge that everything written is somehow already happened and you can see the echoes of it throughout the writing. An enchanting scifi reads.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Incest, Blood, Grief, Dysphoria, War, Classism, and Deportation

verytwilly's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

Striking, beautiful, elegant in its prose, consideration of topics, and motifs. This novel is both a work of art and of philosophy. I enjoyed it to such an extent that I’m lost for words to describe how much it fascinated, compelled, and inspired me…

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Content Warnings

Minor: Body shaming, Confinement, Gun violence, Incest, Mental illness, Suicide, and Violence

tinyjude's review against another edition

adventurous challenging reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

The first half of the book is a bit too slow for my taste and when she switched up perspectives suddenly from the protagonist to the secondary character, it was difficult to discern which one was narrating each part at first. I think, given the time it was written, late 60s, it is a brilliant sci-fi novel that dwells on the topic of gender and how the binary structure society constructed limits the human being. The discussions about gender, society, values, perception, sex, social roles, etc are all enthralling. Albeit my issues with the pace and some plot points that seemed to drag on for too long, I think it's an interesting read for those concerned with these topics and fans of sci-fi. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Forced institutionalization, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Incest

Minor: Miscarriage

bookishperseus's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional informative lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

It did take a while for me to be able to start this book, and at times I found it incredibly slow, complex or tedious.

I did keep reading it because there was a small interest as to what would happen, even though this book is following what could be considered a 'usual every day life'.

Towards the end, I found the final 3 or 4 chapters actually quite interesting. Not something I'd read again, but glad I finished it!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Hate crime, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, and Deportation

Minor: Body shaming, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

moonytoast's review against another edition

3.0

I still am unsure of how I feel about this book. 

It’s a very dense, slow sci-fi with long “travelogue” sequences that help to build a richly complex and vivid world while also examining the nature of Gethenian ‘ambisexual’ anatomy. Right off the bat, The Left Hand of Darkness has a dense but lush sense of world-building — similar to Frank Herbert’s Dune,* but with a much preferred writing style. 

The narrative is reserved to a primarily first-person perspective that switches between both our Envoy, Genly Ai, and his advocate and eventual traitor-turned-travel-companion, Estraven, with the occasional break in order to provide the reader with certain folklore and stories from the world of Winter. In doing so, it avoids what I would call the Frustrating Omnipotence™ of Frank Herbert, whose writing style tends to lean a bit heavy on telling the reader exactly what each character is thinking in every moment as though we are inside their head and experiencing those thoughts as the character. 

That being said: if you’re coming into this story for character work or a more extensive interrogation of how mankind can build connections across different sociological perspectives, then you may be slightly disappointed. Genly Ai and Estraven have an interesting relationship dynamic which morphs throughout the course of the story, but on their own they aren’t the most compelling characters. If you’re not prepared for a VERY, VERY slow burn of a sci-fi book, then you will probably hate this. 

Personally, I think I might have to give this a reread in order to have a more definite take on this book, but I am glad that this introduced me to the subgenre of speculative fiction referred to as queernorm, which includes such entries as Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff and Avalon by Mary J. Jones. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Torture, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Body shaming and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Incest, Sexual content, Suicide, and Pregnancy

pastelkerstin's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense

• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book took a while to get interesting, but once it did, I found it hard to put down.

At its core there are some pretty good radical ideas in here about favouring community over patriotism. Genly speaks of a world based on cooperation and without law enforcement out among the stars. What a vision.

Gender and sex is also obviously a big topic in this book. I think it shows the arbitrariness of gender roles well, even though Genly and the other Envoys struggle with understanding this, as they come from a binarist society. Genly often makes sexist comments about manly or womanly qualities he sees in the Gethenians, people who are neither men nor women (or who are both, depending how you want to see it). But I don't think that means that the reader is supposed to agree with Genly. Seeing whatever a main character says as correct is a misguided way of reading fiction, in my opinion.
That's also why when Genly's interior monologue says that sexual desire/attraction is people's driving force (a very Freudian idea) and a requirement for being human, and therefore the Gethenians with their sexual cycle seem strange and inhuman to him, I think we're not supposed to think he's right. After all,

Genly learns to see Therem fully, as not fitting into Genly's ideas of sexuality and gender, but as a full human being, despite these differences.

There is the implication here that asexuality either doesn't exist on the other planets or that Genly isn't aware of it. So I would put an aphobia warning on this just in case, because reading "no sexual attraction = inhuman" stings even if you know that Genly struggles to see past his own experience of the world.

I think Genly and Therem's relationship is the most interesting part of this book. And it feels very queer to me, even though

they are never officially together

and Gethen doesn't seem to have a concept of queerness (unlike Genly's homeworld).

Overall, I liked this book, even though it has some elements that are a bit squicky or hard to read for me, like the way incest is tolerated on Gethen under certain circumstances and how this is part of one the main characters' backstories, or the aforementioned sexism and (almost certainly unintentional) asexual erasure from Genly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Incest, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Body shaming, Child death, Fatphobia, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Pregnancy

Minor: Ableism, Homophobia, Infertility, and Suicide

troisha's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Death

Moderate: Gun violence, Incest, Misogyny, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Body shaming, Suicide, Blood, Pregnancy, and Alcohol