Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili

4 reviews

jarku's review

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

Faltas is unflinching but may accessibly illuminate, for cis or straight readers, how queerness is entangled with sex work is inextricable from sexism--and how (further amplified by class and colorism!) transmisogyny shapes lives from the first breath.

For trans readers seeking elders, the thread of narrative flows with objective coherence through Gentili's childhood as she stumbles through matter-of-fact formative horrors. Addressing the reader in second person, she offers us the chance to watch through the eyes of her kin and community as she comes into her power, claiming a piece of her world before inevitably outgrowing it. Gentili was a gifted storyteller, possessing a singular emotional affinity with her audience: she withholds and repeats details and motifs to heartbreaking effect. We are poorer that there will be no sequel to this innovatively honest debut memoir.

The prose of these letters is more verbatim than ~literary~, which does not alone detract from its merit. However, somehow this makes the work suffer more than it would otherwise from too many little copyediting errors (sentences without periods, someone appearing as "Jiminez" and reappearing as "Jimenez," etc)--hopefully a second edition will relieve these, and I'll be able to shake that snobby judgment that voice-to-text had a hand in assembling this text.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, and Transphobia

Moderate: Murder and Alcoholism

emtk2118's review

challenging emotional funny fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Rape, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Torture, Vomit, Sexual content, Homophobia, Hate crime, Infidelity, and Physical abuse

Minor: Abortion, Alcoholism, and Murder

spec_tacles's review

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Grief, Homophobia, Transphobia, Alcoholism, Pedophilia, and Rape

Minor: Death of parent

amylureads's review

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-paced

4.5

This book is deeply affecting and brilliant. It is epistolary, each chapter is a letter addressed to a woman in the writer's small hometown of Gálvez, Argentina, some of whom she loved, some despised, many who knew she was being sexually abused as a child and who opted for various reasons to protect the status quo. On the level of language, this book is brilliant. Gentili describes the most difficult topics without shame and in clear detail, uncovering the reasons for her actions and relationships while indicting class-conscious conservative poor Catholic society. Triggers abound but this is absolutely worth reading if one can. ♥️🖤

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Pedophilia, Abandonment, Toxic friendship, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Transphobia, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Bullying, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Infidelity and Mental illness