Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

9 reviews

bookynooknook's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • 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

Set in Bosnia, features families and friends who stay while war and genocide rages. Emotional, destroying and oh so important. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

frietje9's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.5

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

minniepauline's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense fast-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

I couldn’t put this novel down. Set at the beginning of the war in Sarajevo in the Spring of 1992, it’s propulsive in a way that the war feels to the characters. One day it’s unbelievable and then suddenly you’re in the midst and bombs are falling. It’s claustrophobic at times, at times hopeful. There is beauty and pathos. The novel is written in a very close third person, present-tense, and I felt as though I was in the action, experiencing everything that Zora did. Given what is going on in the world today, this feels like a necessary book.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

ciaomara's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad 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? No

4.25

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

creepycrawlybookworm's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

rosalind's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

imo_reads's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad 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? No

5.0

This is a deeply moving book that chronicles the life and times of Sarajevans as their city slips slowly out of their grasp and into the depths of war. The narrative masterfully conveys the creeping sense of dread that things will not get better, interlaced with moments of unity and hope. It aims not to sensationalise or to shock, but to give a true sense of what life was like for ordinary people in Sarajevo in that first brutal year of the war - and it illustrates this with breathtaking clarity. Should be compulsory reading for everyone in light of the war in Ukraine.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

miaaa_lenaaa's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I really really enjoyed this, a very human view of war and its effects. I dont really know anything about this period in history and i think that reflected zoras own bafflement at what is happening. It’s beautifully written and while i didnt cry it came really close a few times.

Potential spoilers in quotes


‘The threshold between night and day feels uncertain, as if she could just as easily slip back into the night as go forwards into the day.’

‘Surely, the so-called Chetniks will shave off their beards and put their grandfather uniforms back in their dressing-up boxes.’

‘Zora stares at the opening, which is greyish white. The colour of nothing - of the void.’

‘Upstairs, it's the space under the arch in her painting that consumes her attention. She spends an age mixing the exact colour. She exaggerates its roundness and is depth. She wants the hole both to recede and at the same time to dominate in an unsettling way, pushing and pulling the viewer, so that the eye, wanting to be drawn to the beauty of the architecture of the stone arch above, or to the gorgeous yellow of the spear-headed flower in the foreground, will continually resist and slide back, halfwilling, half-dragged, into the cave-like void under the bridge.’

‘Everything came into focus as if with the twist of a kaleidoscope.’

‘The woman lies lifeless on the tarmac, her back curved, as if protectively, around a pool of dark blood.’

‘And although she'd tried to explain, her mother hadn't understood at all. And the more Zora had talked, the more she realised she had no idea why this war was happening either.’

‘She finds a candle in the dressing table drawer, but its glow only seems to intensify the stickiness of the halflight that filters through bin bags hanging over the broken windows. Unfamiliar shadows brush against her shins.’

‘The boxes of humanitarian aid are a blessing and a joke.’

‘Looking back to the fire, she realises that what she took for crows circling the Vijecnica are the burnt pages of books. The fragments of her paintings will be there, too, rising and falling over the pyre.’

‘'Black butterflies… Burnt fragments of poetry and art catching in people's hair.'’

‘Behind the walls of snow the sun must be shining quite brightly, because her flat, normally as dark as the grave, is almost radiant with soft white light. Everything seems more manageable now. Soon the holes and craters in the buildings and roads will be masked and Sarajevo will appear beautiful again.’

‘The flat is drawing in on itself, Zora thinks as she inches closer to the stove each night. It's being taken over, room by room, by ice, wind and snow. By the outside. By the war.’

‘The mountains press close and folds of silencing snow lie on the rooftops of the houses below.’

‘It's hard to tell whether this is the first streak of the rising sun or the reflection of buildings on fire.’

‘But Sarajevo is entirely hidden, thank God. Not a tower block, minaret or steeple breaks through the white. Better that way.
Better not to be able to see.’

‘But the thing is she didn't die. No, she went on, just as everyone goes on.
There are no beginnings and no endings. Just war.’
Expand filter menu Content Warnings

misskatz's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark hopeful informative inspiring sad tense fast-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

5.0

Despite this story being about the terrible affects of war on innocent people and their city I loved this book. I was so invested in our protagonist’s story and that of her neighbours, I couldn’t put it down. 
Priscilla Morris is a fantastic storyteller, can’t wait to read whatever sh writes next. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings