Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Exit West

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

42 reviews

peachani's review

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emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

2.5

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theliteraryhooker's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

A moving story that felt very introspective while also commenting on our world and society as a whole. Heartbreaking yet hopeful in equal measure. I felt the book dragged a bit in the middle which I think the slower pace in that sec ion may have been intentional given the context of the book but it still pulled my attention out of the story a bit.

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suzsta's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

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

3.25

Saeed and Nadia are refugees from an unnamed country and an unnamed conflict; they, and millions of others, find their escape when a series of portal doors to other countries begin springing up out of nowhere, leading them on a journey through countries as they search for home. A quiet meditation on the nature of borders, community, and the pressures a relationship endures under such circumstances.

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chaoticnostalgia's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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miachalupa's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective fast-paced

4.75

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steveatwaywords's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Any writer makes a contract with a reader at the start of a work: the reader promises a sincere effort to read; the writer promises value in its completion. This could not have paid off more handsomely, more profoundly, than in this novel.

Our main characters are real, fitting inconveniently into their fictional culture as one does, in communities ruptured as often happens, and made refugees, migrants, as too many are. The novel works, then, as a dialogue between the micro (the relationship between Saeed and Nadia) and the macro (a world compelled to confront the immigrant experience): relationships of choice and of compulsion. Fittingly, and without spoilers, Hamid's closing chapters pull these together in poetic epiphany for us, even if all his characters never quite get it.

Accept the character asides, accept the narrator's distanced omniscience, accept the conceit which propels the novel into its collisions--what awaits is little less than the collective responsibility we all have as readers and dwellers.

Why not five stars? If anything, Hamid is too modest in his ambition, in the depths of his explorations, opting instead for a quickly told short work which might do more still than call the question.

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