Our Share of Night

Well that was a mistake. I have what I think are objective critiques about the book, but overall this was definitely a book/reader mismatch. So grim. I can say with certainty that I would not have gotten past 125 pages without the audiobook to speed me along in tandem. The story is compelling, in that you keep reading in the hope things will become better, but it's basically one horrific instance after another. And then there's the more realistic horrors of genocide and dictatorship. There's a strong theme of fraught father-child relationships between Gaspar and Jaun and then Gaspar and Luis, but as dreadful as life was to Juan I hesitate to consider him a father figure considering how much abuse and neglect he put his son through. The pacing did not help, as it seemed to drag to a standstill in the more pedestrian aspects and skip over some fairly important plot development in regards to Juan's fight to hide/free Gaspar. And then there's Rosario who I really had trouble finding sympathetic considering how much power seemed to overtake familial concerns, even if that was contrasted by how powerless her family often made her feel. Most people in this tale are fucked up and stuck. 
I can see how this could be considered one of those multigenerational family sagas, except, there's not much change to contrast the original circumstances and the subsequent ones.
I can see how it touches on Argentina's history, but it feels so much like an afterthought compared to the stakes suffered by the main characters - it's not that it's unimportant, it's that comparing and contrasting the various levels of misery, torture, sadism, imprisonment between what military dictatorships might have done and what this family did to each other is an exhausting exercise that risks the reader desensitizing or dissociating out of a sense of self preservation.
I can see how this could be a truly gut wrenchingly tragic story if the characters weren't so compromised in their priorities. I'm not one for the morally gray main character, even if I understand the need to empathize with people in impossible situations, those who having been in a cult may not clearly see better options, especially when there's real power, magical, political or financial, as a threat. If Juan and Rosario treated their son less as an afterthought, than the son losing the parents would have landed harder. If Juan's sacrifices for Gaspar weren't so often off page, and his indifference and violence to his son weren't so detailed, I could mourn for what he had to do out of love.
 It felt too often like justifying abuse.
Further to the pacing, even at nearly 600 pages, there were a few to many timelines and characters introduced in the space available. I felt like every story line deserved more space than it got. The quality of the writing kept me going, but overall I would not recommend this reading experience to anyone. Even those who are more disposed to morally gray characters, unrelentingly dark circumstances, I'm not sure you'd be satisfied with the plot as it's laid out. 🤷🏼‍♂️
I might be mad about it later, for now I'm just emotionally exhausted. 

⚠️child abuse, neglect, chronic illness, chronic pain, SA, homophobia, torture, ableism, body horror, gore, self mutilation, suicidal ideation, PTSD