Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

5 reviews

leahkarge's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Blood, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Medical content, Sexism, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Homophobia, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Murder, and Medical content

Minor: Abortion and Pregnancy

lhartjed's review

dark emotional hopeful fast-paced

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

4.0

Furia is a coming of age story centered on Camila, a nearly 18 year old soccer player in Argentina. The novel covers the scope of her soccer season, and in the epilogue jumps to encapsulate the months after finishing school and leaving her home. Furia is at once a novel about becoming, becoming Furia, pursuing dreams, letting go of love and reckoning with years of verbal and hinted at physical abuse. It’s about fear and hope. It’s about growth and discovering how flawed and brutal our parents and culture can be. 

 

While Furia is well written, emotive and vibrant, I can’t say I really fell in love with it. I went in with high hopes, as I do every book I read, but found that I wasn’t engaging with the story the way I had wanted to. I fully recognize that not all books are going to pull you in, or tug at your heart strings or make you feel seen or heard. My life experience is so vastly different than Camila’s, I can hardly imagine the fear and self loathing her community and culture put upon her. Though I didn’t emotionally connect to Furia, I also found some of the plot points to be lacking. The set up to the eventual confrontation with Camila’s father didn’t feel well established, nor was the build to her brother impregnating his girlfriend. The b-plot, or c-plot, of the missing children came in and out of focus so frequently that it made me wonder what the point was. Was it to be fleeting like the girls lives, or was it a commentary on how no one blinks an eye about them? I didn’t find an answer, and the questions that arose weren’t particularly compelling. 

 

Overall, I understand why people have fallen in love with Furia, and I recognize that it’s okay to not be one of those people. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying and Domestic abuse

beautifulpaxielreads's review

challenging dark emotional 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

4.0

Lies have short legs.

What a big-hearted roar of a novel this is.

In Furia, Yamile Saied Méndez skilfully and explosively explores the intersection between misogyny and football (soccer as we know it in Australia, fútbol in Spanish) that exists in Argentina.

On the pitch playing for her women's team, Camila is the fearless, brilliant "La Furia". Off the pitch, however, life is a bit more complicated. As well as the very real threat she faces just by walking home after dark, she has to deal with her overbearing, bullying father, her kind but cynical mother, and her elder brother Pablo, whose career in the professional men's league feels like a shadow she can't escape from under.

Then there's Diego, her childhood sweetheart - who has returned home for a visit after a dazzling career and international fame at the Juventus club in Italy.  Now that he's back, he wants to pick up where he and Camila left off - but does she feel the same?

I'll confess that at first, I had a hard time getting into this one. There are a lot of Spanish words and phrases sprinkled throughout Furia, and I constantly felt the need to go and look up anything I didn't understand. But after a while, I let this urge go (mostly) and my reading experience was so much better for it.

I learned so much from reading this book. Firstly, I had no idea how multicultural Argentina was - Camila herself is of mixed Palestinian, Spanish, and Eastern European heritage (much like the author herself), and other characters are of Chinese and Indian ethnicity - and there are probably others which I don't remember. And the sense of place you get - as well as the Spanish language intermixing that I already mentioned - is really well done.

I had heard that gender-based violence (and murder) is a huge problem across Latin America (as it is in many other parts of the world), and it is in depicting this issue (and the attitudes enabling it) that Saied Méndez really excels. From casual misogyny to systemic, from domestic violence to

the murder of a young girl

, it's all here - and I appreciate that the author didn't shy away from the topic but confronted it head-on.

Diego was a sweetheart, and the way Saied Méndez writes him, it is easy to see why Camila

falls for him all over again

. He's effortlessly charming, down-to-earth, and caring. I was thinking that maybe he was a little too perfect, but towards the end of the novel, when

he revealed that he had come back to take Camila back with him to Italy

made him a bit more realistic to me.

Furia is a novel that wears its heart on the sleeve of a  fútbol jersey - and that's a good thing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Kidnapping, Murder, Violence, Physical abuse, Child death, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Sexual violence, Medical content, and Pregnancy

Minor: Lesbophobia

This book deals with heavy topics such as femicide and violence against women and in some scenes graphically. There is one strong scene of domestic violence where

a teenager is hit with a belt

and another where a young girl

goes missing and is later found dead

.

zombiezami's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful 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

4.5

I'm not that into sports, but I found this book to be quite beautiful. I loved getting to know more about Argentine culture and the Ni Una Menos movement. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Misogyny, and Sexism

Moderate: Blood, Child death, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Ableism, Abortion, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Homophobia, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Murder

mariakureads's review

emotional inspiring 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? It's complicated

4.5

 I thought I was going to get a book in the same vein of a "Bend it Like Beckham," but this was so much more than that.

I couldn't put this down once I got into the book and found myself cheering on Camila as she tried to navigate through her choices, her endearing and overbearing family, her friends and teammates and everything else that was becoming obstacles towards her goal before even she realizes that not everything is an obstacle, choices are easier said than done, and sometimes an obstacle is another path that unseen to get to the same place.

Fantastic characterizations, world building and the sputtering of Spanish throughout that highlighted the world and culture

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Content Warnings

Minor: Bullying and Toxic relationship