Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

26 reviews

aymyoo's review

challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Mental illness, and Terminal illness

bethshuff's review against another edition

emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness

Moderate: Child death, Medical content, and Pregnancy

Minor: Mental illness

will_sandy's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad 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? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Grief

Minor: Mental illness

znvisser's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

My expectations for Hamnet were high, and although I recognize what makes people love this story, I didn't feel that strongly about it myself. It took me a while to figure out why that was though, because I also found the writing to be beautiful, most characters to feel real and the interweaving of storylines to work really well. 

What I think went wrong for me: this story was very slow-paced, giving lots of space to scenery and context descriptions. I guess that's what made this story so tangible, while at the same time not engaging me in whatever came next. So while I enjoyed reading while at it, in between sessions I found I didn't care enough to pick it up again and continue. That's why it took me much longer than I hoped to finish this; eventually I decided to wrap it up in one longer session, and I am happy I did because the ending was absolutely beautiful.

There are many reasons to pick this book up. Quite a chance you'll love it; it just wasn't a match for me.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Grief

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, and Excrement

Minor: Infidelity

perpetualpages's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• 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

4.5

CWs: Some child abuse, descriptions of injury, graphic descriptions of childbirth and complications due to childbirth, some violence, outdated racial epithets, instances of sexism and sexist slurs, physical assault, brief use of ableist language, exploration of contagious illness, death, child death, explorations of grief, allusions to depression and depressive episodes.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Terminal illness, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Child abuse, Mental illness, and Violence

Minor: Ableism and Sexism

tashayns's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Mental illness, and Grief

Moderate: Child abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Medical content

Minor: Animal death and Rape