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happyknitter2020's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
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? It's complicated
5.0
Absolutely brilliant book. Read as shortlisted for The Women's Prize 2024...think this is the clear winner. The writing is beautiful, strong & clear. Learned so much about the civil war & complex trauma experiments. A definitive 5 star book, will be at the top of my 2024 books.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, and War
katarinabee's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Grief, Medical trauma, War, and Injury/Injury detail
jem_f's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: War
Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual violence
kirstym25's review against another edition
emotional
sad
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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and War
Moderate: Rape, Sexual violence, and Suicide
directorpurry's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-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? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Suicide, Medical content, Kidnapping, and War
Moderate: Rape and Pregnancy
hannahbailey's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This was an intense and evocative look into the Sri Lankan civil war from the perspective of one woman, whose life and family were torn apart by it.
The narrative takes a journalistic approach to storytelling, to the point that I felt I was reading a factual eye-witness account of the horrors of the past. Despite the first-person POV, the narrative is pointedly lacking in human emotion and reaction. The recounting of events is direct, so no facts or details are hidden or sugarcoated to protect the reader. This makes for a heavy read as things go from bad to worse, with little reprieve. These aren’t criticisms — in fact, I felt it was a deliberate and powerful choice to convey the story in this way. The narrator experiences unspeakable losses within her own family and witnesses many more atrocities of war. The only way she can tell the truth — which is her aim from the beginning — is to remove much of the heightened emotion she must be feeling.
There is less dialogue than I would expect to find in a novel, but the nature of the plot allows for it. I’m not sure this narrative style is necessarily for me, but it’s refreshing to read something different. I learned a lot about Sri Lanka’s recent history and politics which I found really interesting. The novel spans about 30 years, but follows the narrator and the decisions made by those around her, rather than taking a wider lens to the world at the time. It was particularly poignant then when the author brings in the United Nations towards the end of the novel — after so much ‘avoidable’ conflict and death, the UN’s ambivalence towards civilians’ lives was the final nail in the coffin of what was a horrific and drawn-out war. I was shocked to discover the conflict was still going on in 2009. An informative read if your history education was as white-washed and colonised as mine.
If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy Moth by Melody Razak for similar tone of voice and the depiction of war through one family's experience.
Thank you to NetGalley for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review
TW: war, death, murder, child death, rape, violence, sexual violence, fire, blood/gore, injury detail, kidnapping, torture, genocide, grief, suicide, animal
The narrative takes a journalistic approach to storytelling, to the point that I felt I was reading a factual eye-witness account of the horrors of the past. Despite the first-person POV, the narrative is pointedly lacking in human emotion and reaction. The recounting of events is direct, so no facts or details are hidden or sugarcoated to protect the reader. This makes for a heavy read as things go from bad to worse, with little reprieve. These aren’t criticisms — in fact, I felt it was a deliberate and powerful choice to convey the story in this way. The narrator experiences unspeakable losses within her own family and witnesses many more atrocities of war. The only way she can tell the truth — which is her aim from the beginning — is to remove much of the heightened emotion she must be feeling.
There is less dialogue than I would expect to find in a novel, but the nature of the plot allows for it. I’m not sure this narrative style is necessarily for me, but it’s refreshing to read something different. I learned a lot about Sri Lanka’s recent history and politics which I found really interesting. The novel spans about 30 years, but follows the narrator and the decisions made by those around her, rather than taking a wider lens to the world at the time. It was particularly poignant then when the author brings in the United Nations towards the end of the novel — after so much ‘avoidable’ conflict and death, the UN’s ambivalence towards civilians’ lives was the final nail in the coffin of what was a horrific and drawn-out war. I was shocked to discover the conflict was still going on in 2009. An informative read if your history education was as white-washed and colonised as mine.
If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy Moth by Melody Razak for similar tone of voice and the depiction of war through one family's experience.
Thank you to NetGalley for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review
TW: war, death, murder, child death, rape, violence, sexual violence, fire, blood/gore, injury detail, kidnapping, torture, genocide, grief, suicide, animal
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
ukponge's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
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
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, and War
Moderate: Rape and Sexual violence
Minor: Vomit
hilaryreadsbooks's review against another edition
5.0
Set during Sri Lanka’s civil war, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s BROTHERLESS NIGHT follows a young woman, Sashi, as she seeks to protect both her dreams of becoming a doctor and the lives of her loved ones in the wake of escalating violence and discrimination. As war rages around them, Sashi struggles to survive amidst death, fear, and endless brotherless nights, as she begins to lose the boys she loves the most. These boys—dead, or gone to join the Tamil Tigers and other militant groups fighting for a Tamil homeland, their changing values turning their leaving into another kind of loss, and a moral crisis for Sashi as she determines how she wants to resist, fight, and show her power. At the same time, she is clear that her condemnation of violence is a complicated thing, as all things are in impossible situations. “You must understand: that word, terrorist, is too simple for the history we have lived…” she says. “Whose stories will you believe? For how long will you listen?”
BROTHERLESS NIGHT is an invitation to question the narratives we are told, to restructure the course of history we have mapped out in our minds. It is a powerful tribute to the resistance and bravery of women. Most of all, it is an account of terrible things that happened to many people. As Sashi grieves, she says: “I wanted the four clean walls of my Jaffna childhood, the courtyard with its cup of sunlight, the small and dear lane where I had grown up. Give me a house that hasn’t burned, I thought: an upright home full of people who consider me precious.” I ached for her throughout this book, for the lost lives and futures and would-have-beens, for the ways that hate can make others forget that life should be treated as precious.
Sashi’s resilence and courage are miraculous; and yet I wished for another impossible miracle: to rewind the course of history, to un-burn libraries and markets and homes, to un-do death and starvation, to put the light back in young eyes, to erase blood from hands that were never meant to kill. Listening is a powerful thing, in that it is also a reminder that we cannot change the past, but amplify its stories and work to a changed future.
[Thanks to the publisher for a review copy. This is out now]
BROTHERLESS NIGHT is an invitation to question the narratives we are told, to restructure the course of history we have mapped out in our minds. It is a powerful tribute to the resistance and bravery of women. Most of all, it is an account of terrible things that happened to many people. As Sashi grieves, she says: “I wanted the four clean walls of my Jaffna childhood, the courtyard with its cup of sunlight, the small and dear lane where I had grown up. Give me a house that hasn’t burned, I thought: an upright home full of people who consider me precious.” I ached for her throughout this book, for the lost lives and futures and would-have-beens, for the ways that hate can make others forget that life should be treated as precious.
Sashi’s resilence and courage are miraculous; and yet I wished for another impossible miracle: to rewind the course of history, to un-burn libraries and markets and homes, to un-do death and starvation, to put the light back in young eyes, to erase blood from hands that were never meant to kill. Listening is a powerful thing, in that it is also a reminder that we cannot change the past, but amplify its stories and work to a changed future.
[Thanks to the publisher for a review copy. This is out now]
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Murder, and War
estam1's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Sexism, Sexual violence, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Colonisation, and War
atsundarsingh's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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? Yes
5.0
I couldn't put this down. It was incandescent. It was searing. It made my heart physically ache, and made me do a thousand searches for nonfiction follow-ups. I am 100% going to read Ganeshananthan's previous book. the writing for this just completely gripped me, and once I got going in earnest, it just snowballed.
The family of the novel's protagonist Sashi is complex, and the book spends the entire time slowly unwinding the moral complexity of strongly held beliefs, and unravelling the word 'terrorist'. I was struck by the way Ganeshananthan made the entire cast of characters possible to understand, and you could see consistency of character even as motivation and ideologies changed. Truly can't wait to insist that everyone read this in 2023 and beyond.
*Thanks to Random House, NetGalley for the ARC. Book release: 3 Jan 2023*
The family of the novel's protagonist Sashi is complex, and the book spends the entire time slowly unwinding the moral complexity of strongly held beliefs, and unravelling the word 'terrorist'. I was struck by the way Ganeshananthan made the entire cast of characters possible to understand, and you could see consistency of character even as motivation and ideologies changed. Truly can't wait to insist that everyone read this in 2023 and beyond.
*Thanks to Random House, NetGalley for the ARC. Book release: 3 Jan 2023*
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail