Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

7 reviews

aseel_reads's review against another edition

challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

2.75

I think the idea of the story was interesting but I hate this style of execution and it was really hard to concentrate on the story. Some plot events had me super engaged

um bailey dying?? Wtf

but like it took me so long to remember the names of the kids and I felt like the mum could have been more proactive, especially in the second half 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, Torture, Medical content, Dementia, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and Sexual harassment

nialiversuch's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Grief, Abandonment, and War

Moderate: Child death, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Dementia, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Eating disorder and Vomit

steveatwaywords's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Much heat around this novel, a Booker winner nonetheless, and I can understand the perspectives from both sides, most carrying loads of presumption about what a reading experience should be. I prefer, so much as I can, to allow each book to speak to its purpose on its own terms, and then my reviews mark it to how well it was accomplished. 

To begin, I too, was off-put by the novel's style, at first: massive single-paragraph blocks with dialogue mashed in, the craftings of image or moment buried in unlooked-for details somewhere inside them. What was Lynch thinking? Shouldn't this be a gripping story of terror as a family falls victim to a growing autocracy and war?

Yes, it is. Claustrophobic, even suffocating, experiences a monumental blur, every event of life piled on top of another demanding our attention with equal fervor, who are we to understand and sort it out? This sense of overwhelm, as so many of us experienced during the politics of the pandemic, is tripled here. In brief, this is as much a reading experience as it is a literary novel of plot and theme.

Little need to detail the events of this woman whose men (father, husband, sons) are swept away by various circumstances to places dark and uncertain. Desperately she accepts her role of holding her family together, and at some point (you decide when but we will all disagree) her noble strength becomes ignorant folly. As the country and family slip apart, as the four children each suffer their trauma in unique ways, as tightly as the narrative camera focuses in on her, we see how easily--how anonymously--she might become a statistic of war, her story lost, disappeared.

And this growing tension is absolutely relentless. We might argue how many choices were actually available, about what sacrifices would "reasonably" be made when all is unreasonable. We might even argue responsibility for the suffering. But we will agree: the events are entirely too plausible, too hyperreal, too close to our fears and too (f)actual for communities who do suffer (and against whom we build walls).  

Build what you want. Lynch takes these walls apart, and some of us will still not believe.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Hate crime, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Dementia

kiwichill's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Dementia, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Misogyny, Excrement, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, and Pandemic/Epidemic

nessreadsalot's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

In this dystopian story Ireland is falling under a tyrannical government party who draw the country into a civil war.
Mother of 4 Eilis, is the main protagonist in this story and we follow her journey coming to terms with the changes and eventual collapse of society and her struggle to keep her family safe and together. 

I found the unconventional writing style a little off putting to start but once I got settled into the story I found it added to the building feeling of claustrophobia and urgency. I really would have liked chapters shorter than 30+ pages though as someone who likes to use chapters as stopping points. 

Eilis frustrated me so much at times with her insistence that everything was going to be OK soon but my heart was utterly broken for her by the end. 

I can't say that I enjoyed this book because it's not an enjoyable subject. It was a book to be experienced that gives that little nudge to the fear that we are lucky by accident of birth that this is not our current reality. 

"the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore,”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Torture

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Blood, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Dementia, Trafficking, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

katieana_210's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

One of the best books I’ve ever read. I truly was in awe of the writing, the story, the way the characters broke me apart. This book is a lessen in why fiction is so important. Lynch is so deserving of the Booker Prize. I won’t be able to stop thinking about this book. I won’t be able to stop suggesting to people! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, War, and Injury/Injury detail

esalan's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Dementia, Grief, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Alcohol

Minor: Rape