Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

9 reviews

felishacb's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

This novel is an experimental, wild ride. The story features a trans and/or intersex character and is told by a trans scholar and professor. The basis of the novel is the true legend of a historical figure, a white English man named Jack Sheppard whom I had never heard of. In CONFESSIONS, Rosenberg, a trans author, queers the story and imagines Jack as a gender-expansive thief. 

Footnotes tell the story of the narrator of sorts who is translating and interpreting the tale. They are also dealing with a faceless entity who wants to control the translation and treats Jacks's transness with an otherness. These layers give Rosenberg the opportunity to comment on queerness, as well as class, colonialism, and power. 

Another main character based on reality is Bess who in this book is an Asian sex worker. Bess offers a safe place for Jack and teaches him more about class revolution by sharing her own family's tragic story. Her lived experience could connect with Jack's own experience of class oppression (and queer repression) and inform him on how it intersects with racism. 

Although it is fiction, this book serves as a powerful reminder that trans people (and people of color) have always been here and have always been the main characters in their stories even if their history is lost or never told. 

Towards the last third of the novel, I did find myself not picking this up as much. But the authors voice and perspective kept me wanting to see how this story ended and what nuggets of truth they would share.

From the book: "All history should be the history of how we exceeded our own limits."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Death, Blood, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Abandonment

Moderate: Racism, Kidnapping, Genocide, Confinement, Physical abuse, Torture, and Homophobia

Minor: Grief

dziggetai's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Gore, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, and Transphobia

Moderate: Slavery, Excrement, Drug use, Alcohol, Classism, Murder, Colonisation, Cursing, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Vomit

singlier's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg 4/5 🦊s 

This book is weird--part memoir, part unhinged rambling footnotes, part collective memory. It reimagines the life of famous Victorian thief, Jack Sheppard, as a transgender man, exploring the intersections of his identity with period-accurate racism, incarceration, destruction of land, government corruption, and colonialism. It is also a story-within-a-story: told in the footnotes of the memoir is the story of Dr. Voth, a transgender man and college professor, currently grappling with the loss of his love and his debilitating OCD, who imprints onto Jack and uses the footnotes as the pedestal for self-reflection and anti-academia rhetoric. 

At the end of the novel, I can't say I understood everything. It is committed to its appearance as an authentic 18th century text, which means it is dense and difficult to parse. The footnotes only add to its difficulty: calling upon a vast array of knowledge from Marxism to queer theory. The plot too, often feels scattered: caught between a mysterious conspiracy of government corruption and Jack's unquestionable love for his partner. But, with all this, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I could not predict where it would lead me, but I enjoyed the journey there. 

Minus points for a lot of mentions of piss, even though it does (eventually) become plot relevant.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Colonisation, Gore, Racism, Vomit, Sexual content, Blood, Classism, Excrement, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Violence

caseythereader's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Xenophobia, Confinement, Death, Dysphoria, Classism, Alcohol, Gore, Racism, Colonisation, Cursing, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Deadnaming, Grief, Murder, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Police brutality, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Excrement, and Violence

ninjamuse's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Death of parent, and Police brutality

Moderate: Transphobia, Sexual content, Colonisation, and Classism

Minor: Forced institutionalization

streberkatze's review against another edition

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

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence

Moderate: Excrement

carbs666's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Deeply researched and lovingly crafted, this book is like nothing I've ever read before. Confessions layered on top of confessions, the inherent queerness of the disobedient archive, funny and insightful and personal footnotes, unreliable and fantastical and multiplicitous narration, a utopia outside of time, an escape. It's good. You have to read it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Medical content, Dysphoria, Alcohol, Confinement, Police brutality, Injury/Injury detail, and Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Medical content, Police brutality, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Blood, Body horror, Racism, and Transphobia

octopus_farmer's review against another edition

hopeful lighthearted mysterious 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

4.5

I liked the conceit - in many ways this is what i wanted The Starless Sea to be. I was almost annoyed by the researcher at times but came around on him. I also loveddd how the footnotes and related readings are all real texts! However, there’s a fair amount of piss that at times is kinky.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Excrement, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual content

Moderate: Racism and Transphobia

meremeth's review against another edition

adventurous lighthearted reflective medium-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racial slurs, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Dysphoria, and Blood

An extremely thoroughly and passionately researched retelling of Jack Shepard through a queer lens. This might not be a perfect book, but it is incredibly well done in certain aspects. I would recommend to anyone looking for good representation of queer love and trans masculine coming of age.