Reviews with content warning for Violence - Land of Milk and Honey

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

17 reviews

rebcamuse's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.25

What a very beautiful and disturbing book. It is not dystopic in a clichéd sort of way and the writing is poetry. It is memoir (fictional, yes, but memoir all the same). It is speculative fiction. Eunice Wong's reading is perfection, with just the right amount of gravitas with an equanimity that helps us understand (hear her talk about it here). What is sensuous in food and in life becomes ethically blurry when most of the world is overtaken by a smog of debatable origin and the protagonist, a former cook, goes to work for a mysterious employer on a mountain in Italy, above the smog (and above the rules of living below, it would seem). Privilege is redefined and reframed, disguised as innovation.

The imagery and descriptive writing is phenomenal. Zhang is deliberate in linking language across the story: the "calculus of loss" becomes the "connoisseurship of loss"--a subtle juxtaposition spaced several chapters apart, easy to miss. Metaphors abound: "...as I would not serve bitter greens without the consolation of oil, I began to keep back my less palatable feelings..." The insights, too, are plentiful: "Across the years it is hard to make out this version of myself, so blinkered by ambition that she sprinted through thirty years without asking, why?"

It was a slower "read" for me than I anticipated, but there is, forgive me, much to chew upon.

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shubka's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? No

4.5

This dystopic future seems all to real & plausible- which made it difficult to read at times. The food & cooking imagery is what kept me reading as the story unfolded slowly.

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anitaconchita's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense 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

4.0

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jayisreading's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.75

I really enjoyed Zhang’s debut novel, so I entered Land of Milk and Honey with relatively high expectations. Much like How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Zhang delivered exquisite lyricism and a distinct writing style that will be hit-or-misses for readers. She also presented some really interesting themes in Land of Milk and Honey—especially in relation to a dystopian world—which was a variety that included beauty, social class, pleasure, and climate change. I will say, though, that the themes were not overtly stated and might require the reader to tease them out, which could be frustrating given the prose. I also thought it would have been nice if Zhang had stuck with fewer themes to explore in-depth as opposed to the multiple that she seemed to have wanted to discuss.

I think Land of Milk and Honey fell flat for me because I wasn’t entirely invested in either the story or the characters. Regarding the story, there certainly was a plot, but it was a very slippery one to grasp that resulted in me losing interest over time. As for the characters and their relationships with one another, they were interesting enough, but I didn’t think they were particularly memorable. With all this said, I will say that I think I may have picked this book up at the wrong time and just wasn’t in the right headspace for it.

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