Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Declínio de um homem

This book honestly surprised me…in a great way. I fully expecting to hate it. To slog through it. To have a really hard time reading it. But to my surprise, I freaking loved this book. It was such an interesting perspective on life and that feeling of isolation. There were a lot of lines that hit home for me and struck me in an intense way.

What I Liked

The autobiographical nature of it made it feel caught between a memoir and fiction.
- Having the character look at photos of the boy and then reading the journal entries, very meta, but also gave such an interesting weight to seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes and what they must see in every tiny detail of you.
The writing — absolutely stunning.
- “I shut away my private anguish in a tiny compartment, keeping my gloom and nervousness secret and putting on a determined show of innocent cheer until, little by little, my transformation into a droll eccentric was complete.”
Dazai so eloquently captures the feeling of being an outsider and isolation in this book that I haven’t really read or connected with anywhere else. That feeling of putting on a show everywhere you go to be liked, but never really connecting with people on that deeper level.

What I didn’t like

More like a content warning: it is very dark — this book is not for the faint of heart, as it’s dealing with tough topics like suicide, drugs, and alcoholism.
Don’t love that he plays such a pivotal role in another girl’s death.

Content Warnings

nyra's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense 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? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

eatmytoe404's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

i found some parts relateable and some parts very foreign

Content Warnings

manjuuu's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

This book means a lot to me, such a harrowing exploration of alienation, despair and the struggle for identity. Dazai's raw and visceral description of depression, suicide and the search for meaning perfectly encapsulates what it means to be no longer human.

Content Warnings

ammireads's review against another edition

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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? Yes

4.0

“from then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: what is society but an individual?”

i would say the book was terribly sad but oddly funny, at times, in its absurdity. the main character seemed to run so much from the idea of “society” of what he believed a human being is like that he somehow got stuck in it. i think, at the end, through it all, his biggest enemy was himself

Content Warnings

klonopin's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

fishreads's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

2.0

I seriously didn't get what this guy's problem was, except being an entitled spineless brat with zero redeeming qualities. But apparently this book is second most sold book in Japan, what am I not getting here?

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