Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt

16 reviews

peachiepeachie's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

marc_a_lope's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad

4.5

Beautifully written. The imagery and the detail of the authors inner voice weave beautiful images that one can find glimpses of themselves in. 
The story itself is devastating picture of loss and the way things outside our control shape us and take from us; and at the same time, how we push back against the world,  and find ourselves again.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

marie33's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

jarku's review against another edition

challenging dark sad slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Suicide

thesawyerbean's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

An absolutely stunning memoir - Seán Hewitt stands on the shoulders of pre-eminent poets such as Hopkins and Karen Boye to meditate passionately on his life, his loves and his queerness. 

It is harrowing in its portrayal of queer coming-of-age throttled by religious trauma and societal expectation. It lays bare the cycle of danger and self-destruction that many experience growing up, trying to live truthfully in a post-AIDS landscape:

“I, like others, held closer to a different truth: that the water contains the souls of the dead, trapped in the graveyard, and that it turns black, like blood, when boiled.

Ghosts in the water, ghosts in the blood. Everything, once you start to look, is haunted.”

Beauty bleeds from these pages, drawing from the natural world and his emotions to vividly describe his experiences - but revealing how this beauty can rot into something much darker: how the interweaving threads of your relationships can soon tighten into knots around your throat. His discussions on mental health, dependency and loss are heart-wrenching. Watching the fire of someone you love dwindle and flicker, feeling the guilt and the hollowness written with devastating lyricism.

“I would be afraid of [him], as though he was a new person now, or was inhabited by a new person; someone who might, at any moment, kill him. It was as though he was shadowed at every turn by an inversion of himself, someone who stalked his every thought and followed his every move, and whispered dark things in his ear. He was both the man I loved and the person who wanted to kill the man I loved.”

Ultimately, this is a book about reminiscence: remembering the ghosts of our past lovers and queer ancestors, the nostalgia for our devastation, the joyful memories that gleam through the fog in spite of it. Hewitt expertly underlines the magnificence of life despite the horrors, and shows us how to pick ourselves up and rebuild through his own experiences. 

“For most of my life I had thought that all I could be sure of was the past. I think I had seen memory as a sort of route, a pathway, which stopped off at all the significant events of my life, and formed a narrative, explaining how I got to where I am, and how I got to be who I am. Like stepping stones across the river Lethe, there were some memories I held on to. Over all that river of forgetfulness - into which experiences, thoughts and words dropped every day - these memories made a crossing, some solid ground I could traverse. All those years, it was as though time were blowing through me and taking form, being winnowed into narrative.”

A masterful piece of writing: one that was personally affecting, and will no doubt stay with me for a long time.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Outing, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

nmruss's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Homophobia, Religious bigotry, and Alcohol

somebody109's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

sabsey's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

 5 stars but the last star is because this book encapsulates some eerily similar experiences or deeply personal things I've never been able to express or seen written down until now.

This is a very, very heavy read, but a stunning one.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide and Suicide attempt

remimicha's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Classism

library_of_al's review against another edition

challenging medium-paced

4.75

I loved this book so much. It was relatable in some aspects but also heartbreaking. Overall I learned so much.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Homophobia, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicide, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, and Alcohol