kandicez's review against another edition
4.0
This is a book about grief. Nothing else, simply grief, which is never simple and we all feel it at some point. One of the few guarantees in life is that if you live long enough you will lose someone close to you.
The “Hood” of the title refers to the suffix we add to certain nouns to turn them into states of being; motherhood, fatherhood, widowhood, neighborhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood to name a few. Pen, our narrator is the left behind lover of Cara who dies, off page, unexpectedly in a taxi crash coming home from the airport after a trip. I always think death during or at the end of a vacation is doubly sad. Those you’ve left behind said goodbye, yes, but it was the temporary “have fun, I’ll miss you, wish I was coming” sort of goodbye. They’ve had the idea of welcoming you back to keep them going and it’s been snatched.
Pen and Cara live with Cara’s father who is seemingly oblivious to their true relationship. He thinks they are best mates. No one in either young ladies' family knows that the two are actually lovers and that seems even more tragic. Pen, who is a widow in every sense of the word, cannot wear the widowhood weeds. She is unable to grieve in a way appropriate for a lost lover. This not only intensifies her grief over the week that we are with her, but also undermines her sense of self.
This book touched my heart. Donoghue has such a way of conveying feeling that oozes from the page. She isn’t maudlin or purple in her prose, and yet the feelings are still heavy and made me stop reading and just look across the grass and count my blessings occasionally. Pen’s grief made me so very aware of the possibility of my own.
My favorite line was: “My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the ‘Lord have mercy’ prayer was the gracious phrase ‘Invitation to Sorrow’. Hey there, Sorrow, how’ve you been keeping? Come on in. If your bike doesn’t have lights you can always crash on our sofa tonight. Oh, so you’ll be staying a while, Sorrow? Planning to get to know me better? Grand, so. There’s tea in the pot. All”
It just slayed me. That’s the acceptance stage of grief on a page.
The “Hood” of the title refers to the suffix we add to certain nouns to turn them into states of being; motherhood, fatherhood, widowhood, neighborhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood to name a few. Pen, our narrator is the left behind lover of Cara who dies, off page, unexpectedly in a taxi crash coming home from the airport after a trip. I always think death during or at the end of a vacation is doubly sad. Those you’ve left behind said goodbye, yes, but it was the temporary “have fun, I’ll miss you, wish I was coming” sort of goodbye. They’ve had the idea of welcoming you back to keep them going and it’s been snatched.
Pen and Cara live with Cara’s father who is seemingly oblivious to their true relationship. He thinks they are best mates. No one in either young ladies' family knows that the two are actually lovers and that seems even more tragic. Pen, who is a widow in every sense of the word, cannot wear the widowhood weeds. She is unable to grieve in a way appropriate for a lost lover. This not only intensifies her grief over the week that we are with her, but also undermines her sense of self.
This book touched my heart. Donoghue has such a way of conveying feeling that oozes from the page. She isn’t maudlin or purple in her prose, and yet the feelings are still heavy and made me stop reading and just look across the grass and count my blessings occasionally. Pen’s grief made me so very aware of the possibility of my own.
My favorite line was: “My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the ‘Lord have mercy’ prayer was the gracious phrase ‘Invitation to Sorrow’. Hey there, Sorrow, how’ve you been keeping? Come on in. If your bike doesn’t have lights you can always crash on our sofa tonight. Oh, so you’ll be staying a while, Sorrow? Planning to get to know me better? Grand, so. There’s tea in the pot. All”
It just slayed me. That’s the acceptance stage of grief on a page.
foggy_rosamund's review
5.0
A finely wrought and beautifully judged novel, exploring the seven days following the death of Penelope's partner, Cara. Set in Ireland of the early 1990s, Penelope, teaching in a convent school, is not out to anyone about her relationship with Cara, and is forced to navigate not only the loss of her beloved, but how to justify her grief to society at large. Using a mixture of flashbacks and and the intensity of the days following a loss, Donoghue celebrates Cara and her relationship with Penelope, and the particular loss of someone who dies at only 30. She creates a clear, convincing portrait of not only the difficulties of a queer relationship at this time, but its strength. This is also a profoundly tactile and erotic novel: Donoghue beautifully interweaves an intense sexual and sensual relationship with a romantic one, and shows how sex can deepen our understanding of one another and ourselves. This book is a brilliant example of writing about grief, sex and love, and is to be recommended.
m4tr1m0ny's review against another edition
depressing, intimate, slow, very physical
maehwa's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
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
3.5
horrorfemme15's review
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
jamietherebelliousreader's review
3.0
3 stars. Interesting plot but I really didn't like the characters nor the writing style. It just felt like a mess and the jump between time periods was so confusing and structured weirdly. I liked that it was so much about grief but the execution was so off. This was my first book by Donoghue and while it was nothing impressive I'd probably pick up something else by her.
hannahleila's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I can’t believe this is the same author that wrote Room.
This was an incredibly poignant journey through the initial aftermath of grief.
A lot of this resonated with me; feeling like you’re doing it all wrong if you’re not falling to absolute pieces, I even begged my boss to let me come back to work the very next day.
It is also the retelling of a cozy, quiet queer love in all its glory.
This was an incredibly poignant journey through the initial aftermath of grief.
A lot of this resonated with me; feeling like you’re doing it all wrong if you’re not falling to absolute pieces, I even begged my boss to let me come back to work the very next day.
It is also the retelling of a cozy, quiet queer love in all its glory.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Car accident, Lesbophobia, and Death
_ninahannah's review
4.0
Really beautiful writing and an interesting premise. I think it might just not be the book for me? I like books with plots. It was pretty boring and slow and the sex scenes were so unnecessarily graphic. It was like 50% descriptions of things I don't care about, 30% erotica, 20% flashbacks of their relationship, and 0% plot.
lynnski's review against another edition
2.0
I read this book as part of a challenge to read outside of my normal genres. It won the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature so it fit one of the categories I needed to fill. It is the story of a young woman morning the sudden loss of her partner of the last 13 years. The story only takes place during one week, however, there are a great deal of flashbacks during that week. I thought that would make for a great love story but to me, it fell way short. Admittedly, the sex scenes were too detailed and uncomfortable so I found myself speed reading through most of them but I don’t think that affected my opinion. I think the author did a good job on the effects of the main character living in the closet with her job and family and thus having to mourn a best friend rather than a lover/spouse but missed many opportunities to show love and instead chose lust. She also seemed to prefer to cheapen the relationship with affairs by one of the women rather than have more romance. Overall, I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone but wish I had picked a better book.
sm_almon's review against another edition
5.0
Thought this was great - really thought-provoking. Looking forward to discussing it at book club!