Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Heaven

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

87 reviews

saunak's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No

3.75

This book was extremely hard for me to listen to and even harder to rate.
'Heaven' follows two middle-schoolers' treacherous bullying experiences. Initial frustrations and experiences slowly evolve into philosophical musings and questions to understand existence and nihilism. The author highlights everything from mockery due to physical appearance, morality, good vs evil, humanity or the lack of it, innocence or the loss of it, and more. Although spoken via fictional experiences of 14-year-olds (their words, thoughts, and actions are shocking and quite disturbing), the author vividly holds up a mirror to prick the audience's morality through these extremely uncomfortable cascading narratives. The end does have a positive note, but the book left a bitter aftertaste and truly so (what the author aimed for, I guess).

'...weakness matters, it has real meaning....but know what? If weakness matters so does strength and I don't mean weak people using the idea of strength to justify their weakness...'

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rkhill's review against another edition

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1.5

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blackbegonias's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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madapatru's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated

4.5

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mmcloe's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-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? It's complicated

4.25

I think a lot of readers will be quick to draw pretty divergent ideological interpretations of this - either as an endorsement of nihilism or a lamentation of its arrival. I think placing these ideologies in the minds and hands of middle schoolers is a really effective way to demonstrate how much moral development is being constantly negotiated and re-formed as we grow. There's bits of light and freedom (to the extent those are good) in many outlooks, the answer on how to grasp them further is a process.

Otherwise, pretty interesting reflection on how fleshy and bodily it is to be young.

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