Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Thrust

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch

11 reviews

aprilg0124's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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blueteacup's review against another edition

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adventurous

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

Thrust is a highly surreal, highly conceptual book that doesn’t shy away from graphic sexuality. While I enjoyed this book for its interesting premise, characters and setting, I did have some problems with certain plot threads falling flat and unneeded details that led to me feeling a bit uncomfortable.

I loved Laisve as a character and protagonist. Though she was sometimes difficult to understand (on purpose), I enjoyed exploring her quirks (such as listing things incessantly) and mature insight into other people’s lives. She’s a kind girl who’s circumstances and powers make her into an odd duck. I also really enjoyed the futuristic setting of The Brooks. A city half underwater and plagued by raids on immigrants seems like a logical conclusion to the climate crisis and attacks on immigrants present in modern day America. Emphasizing the struggles of the country in modern day through both past and future settings made for interesting commentary on how history repeats itself.

My problems with the book lie mostly in plot threads that seem to go nowhere or wrap up unsatisfyingly, and the uncomfortable incestuous relationship between Aurora and Frederich. I felt that the story line with Lily felt very unsatisfying to me, and, while I understand this book is in part about sex, I don’t think having her have a very fulfilling sexual experience really had anything to do with her problems relating to her father and brother. I got what she was going for with the coffin scene, but it just didn’t do it for me. I also found the relationship between Frederich and his cousin Aurora to be deeply uncomfortable. I understand that it takes place in a different time period when having sex with your cousin was a more normal thing to do, but the sex scenes between them were described so graphically and almost voyeuristically that it surpassed all that Yuknavitch was trying to say about sexual deviancy, and just made me deeply uncomfortable.

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msalomons's review

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challenging mysterious reflective

4.5

rare for me to feel the experience of being sucked into a book the way i was as a kid, but every time i picked this book up i was transported immediately. i've never read lidia yuknavitch before but holy shit, the control she has over language and form and storytelling is incredible. loved every inch

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readsbylindsey's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

2.5

honestly what a weird book. it has the vibes of those weird ass books you read in college that don't make any sense until you discuss them with your literature class, and then it only kind of makes sense but you do know the themes of it. it had some brilliant moments and the vibes were great, but it's very nonlinear and i don't think i know what the hell was going on. i think i want to read this with a college literature group so that it makes more sense. i don't know if i'd recommend it for any other type of setting unless you're really in the mood for a weird vibe and for things to only kind of makes sense. this book feels like riding a wave, which was the point.

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sierras12's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

3.5

the writing is beautiful but I think I am not smart enough to follow books that are so deeply nonlinear because by the end I was just like huh? also fair warning it gets pretty explicit in a way I wasn’t prepared for when listening to the audiobook in whole foods.

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lanid's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging

4.25

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zed_dog's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging hopeful medium-paced

3.5

Lyrical language, lots of recurring symbolism, and a dreamlike fluidity of description and meaning that makes everything seem like a metaphor. Strange and beautifully written, but easy to lose the threads of the plot.

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readundancies's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

This book was kind of a trip.

And by kind of, I mean, it was definitely a trip.

A trippy, fever dream of absurdity and confusion and eroticism and I’m not gonna lie, it was not infrequently overwhelming.

I was lostity lost lost for a good portion of my reading experience. The time jumping was really fucking with my flow but I also kind of liked it? Strange, I know. However, the writing and prose was just breathtaking. I love the way Lidia Yuknavitch writes; the stories woven with history, provocative yet merciful, compassionate but unrelenting.

The fever dream vibes were a bit confusing. Like Alice in Wonderland confusing, in that you’re thrown into a situation with absolutely no frame of reference and are forced to survive despite your human fallacies. I haven’t decided if that’s a pro or a con yet because there was also a lot of metaphor embedded within it all, but the writing softens the more harrowing aspects of the novel. It was whimsy and absurdity all rolled into some rather pretty and poignant prose. Things seemed vague and without any sort of direct intent at times, but it was all tempered into manageable parts.

There was a lot going on with the characters that we follow in the story but I want to focus specifically on Aurora and Laisvė. Aurora gives us discourse on humans being whittled down to their body parts and missing limbs surpassing the bodies they once made whole. We get an exploration of the erotic, the freedom of ecstasy and finding words to name that which you’ve always been seeking. We get feminism beyond reproduction, beyond and within motherhood and child birth as well as manhood without power. We get the past haunting the future as it’s own phantom limb and the pleasure found in pain alongside the pain that lies in pleasure. And we explore prostitution, sex work and the salvation that can be wrought from the human form.

With Laisvė, we get my favourite character of the novel, a girl traversing the waters of time and weaving change into stitches. We observe how those who float do not always live. We observe the recycling of names, their turnabout nature, how they act as labels that are stuck and removed as if they are disposable. We observe the disjointed nature of connection; a tale of stories, of little known histories that have been birthed from the waters of life.

Thrust is a tale that traverses beyond time and space, beyond night and day and life and death. It’s a tale that takes place where fever dreams are born and nightmares go to die, where animals speak their disdain of the destruction of humanity because we as a species are so lacking in intelligence and imagination. It’s a tale where drowning is a baptism and children hold all the knowledge that humans could ever know and slowly lose it all as their brains age and decompose. It’s a tale of history and geography, language and philosophy. Of biology and ecology.

And it ends with History and Liberty discussing their mother’s choice of names, and a cranky little turtle demanding to be fed so that he can set their species straight on a path to a worthy future.

Everything on the cover is relevant.

Everything about the title is apropos.

It is a story not about time-travel but rather a story which uses time-travel as a means to connect people in an additional way to how they are already connected.

I didn’t always like the characters or the narrative and how fragmented it felt, but I found myself continually coming back to it and picking it up again because something about the writing just had this hold on me.

It’s not a story that I know how to recommend or who to recommend it to, but it was definitely absorbing and intriguing.

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runrina11's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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vigil's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

this book was so weird and bizarre that i have no idea how to give it a review. I cannot in good conscience recommended to someone but I would love for more people to read it, and I say that because it is too weird to pitch to a person.

the writing is beautiful and untraditional, switching between “regular prose,” epistolary, and ethnography (?) formats. the author discusses child labor and abuse, feminism, sex work, disability, how young men are groomed into violence, water, the past, nature, humanity, linguistics, knowledge, etc etc.

if i tried to discuss everything In this book would be here all day. i do think at certain points the book was stuffed full to bursting of these themes, but she did so much of what I enjoyed, in such a way, that i did not mind, though I do think certain people absolutely would.

this book read like a fever dream. It was out of bounds of what is normally considered the “literary standard” (whatever the hell that may be). it is written nonlinearly; it has a plot, but the plot is meant to serve the greater purpose of the narrative and is unconcerned on telling a cut and dry straightforward story.

i don’t think this is anywhere near an adequate review of the book, but it’s the only one I can provide. this is a book that you really just need to read and decide for yourself about.

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