Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

18 reviews

lizard800's review

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

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emmaemooney's review

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dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

3.5

I did not like it as much as I hoped I would! At the beginning, I could see the potential for some really great weaving of interconnected themes, but it never really came together for me. There were also a lot of scenes/pages that seemed to be dropped out of nowhere, unrelated to the main/any plot, and tho I can appreciate a slice of life, in the context of this book I didn’t really understand why they were included.

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meghanreads00's review

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funny informative sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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idesofmarch's review

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

5.0

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katieconrad's review

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challenging emotional sad fast-paced

5.0

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nobirdtennis's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This graphic novel was phenomenal. Really and truly bone-chilling. Beaton paints a vivid picture of the desolate landscape of oil camps in the Canadian plains. As someone who has had family in these big Canadian industries, it was an eerily familiar tale of corporations willing to feed bodies to the machine under the guise of providing economic vitality to an area and financial stability to local families. A devastating portrayal of masculinity under capitalism. Beaton’s full page spread illustrations of massive machinery evoked images of icebergs: towering, awe-inspiring, and yet somehow deeply unnerving.

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mintii's review

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challenging funny reflective fast-paced

4.0

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antoniag's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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shays's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

Content Note: Sexual assault

Ducks makes for a somewhat grim read, dealing as it does with the double whammy of environmental devastation and sexual assault. The entire comic is drawn in greyscale, from the starkly beautiful landscapes of Cape Breton and Northern Alberta to the barren devastation of the oil sands, and even the aurora borealis and a rainbow. Beaton largely elides the first assault with four simple but effective pitch-black panels. The second time, slightly more is shown on page as she depicts herself getting up and walking away from her body while the attack takes place.

Threaded throughout the narrative is the deep longing for home experienced by the many Atlantic Canadians forced to go west in order to find work to support their families. The camps are filled with refugees from the collapsed resource industries of Newfoundland and Cape Breton, be it mining or fishing.

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ktdakotareads's review

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dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

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