Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Meu Amigo Dahmer by Derf Backderf, Érico Assis

4 reviews

chaoticbeing's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

THIS is what a true crime novel should be about. It doesn’t feel like some flashy, exploitative story about Dahmer. Very quickly it becomes less and less about him and more and more of a commentary about how small town Americana leaves the most exploited and abused behind to keep up an image. 
The movie adaptation is bad though. Don’t bother.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Bullying

Minor: Vomit and Abortion

moto1480's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

4.0

My Friend Dahmer is an interesting real life story of Backderf's experiences growing up with Jeffrey Dahmer. It's well-written and quickly sucks you in. It would have been very easy for the author to pretend to have been closer to Dahmer than he was, but he's very clear about the high school friendship(?) that he had with him. The art is different and I'm not an huge fan of Backderf's style. It's sweaty MAD magazine-esque, if that makes sense. 

While Backderf says repeatedly that he didn't write this to engender sympathy for Dahmer, you can't help but wonder what could have been if anyone was paying attention to him before he killed for the first time. I actually think this graphic novel is Backderf's way of coming to terms with being unable to do anything for and about Dahmer. I enjoyed this immensely, though the end ran out of steam.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Drug abuse, and Murder

amarj33t_5ingh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

4.0

An insightful gaze into Dahmer's past to argue he wasn't born evil but made evil by his dysfunctional family. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Blood, Grief, Cannibalism, Stalking, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Alcohol

flamesocks's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Drug abuse, Hate crime, Mental illness, Cannibalism, and Murder

Minor: Ableism