Written by Anne Valente
Review written by Diana Iozzia3
I have to give myself a lot of credit for being able to get through this book. I always feel a bit unkind for writing negative reviews, but I just didn’t enjoy the book. As this hobby goes, I come across great books and I come across books I just don’t want to finish. This book took me four days to get through, and honestly, I’m surprised I finished it that quickly. Some books I can finish in two hours. Picking up this book felt like picking up a boulder.
This book is sad, for the first 40 pages. After the unsettling and horrifying shooting, we’re subjected to poor, jumbled writing that’s so repetitive, it could have a drinking game attached to it. Drink every time Matt wishes he could talk to Tyler. Take a shot the eighteen times he describes in detail the girl’s body that he saw bleed out. When Zola and Christina have a weird gay moment. When Christina is mad at her jerk boyfriend. When Zola thinks about how she wishes she could take pictures, but it’s always during inappropriate moments, like the four funerals we read in deep detail. The storytelling is sort of diary-like, terrible first-person collective narration, that sounds like a long-winded graduation speech. We don’t know how to move on from this. Our town will never be the same. We want to know why this happened. We feel lost. And then, the characters’ prose is told in third person. It’s not as if the four characters are describing a particularly uncomfortable sex scene, it’s only told through Nick’s perspective. I don’t understand this dream-state, marijuana high-like narrative.
There are so many lists in this book. The groceries that one of the characters used to make fajitas. The smells in Autumn. The items left behind in fires (2x). My next gripe is also certain chapters. They begin with “The Brief History Of”... They describe autopsy procedures, arson investigations, what bodies look like post-mortem, how the brain forms memories, definitions of fire investigation terms, how crime scenes are collected and catalogued. It’s so unnecessary. I can imagine it would be a 30 second montage in NCIS, but in this book, these are long chapters that aren’t necessary. If I wanted to know more about how police officers determine arson, I’d Google it! (Or you know, read an actual non-fiction, scholarly book, rather than just have it summarized through the fictional perspective of a sixteen year-old).
The main premise following the shooting is the recovery of the students in the town. Our main characters are Matt, Christina, Zola, and Nick. They are the yearbook crew of their high school, struggling to memorialize the students and administration lost in the tragedy. I was originally fascinated by this premise, I hadn't ever thought what the yearbook committee's job would be like after such a horrible tragedy. Also, a completely unnecessary plot of arson: the houses belonging to all of the juniors who were killed in the shooting are burning down and killing the family members inside. The worst part is the useless police force. They decide that someone is clearly burning down the houses of the families affected. When do they start considering who's next? After about 5 families are killed. Do they fix the problem? Do they put the families into protective custody? Do they do anything? No. This is a useless plot point, and it just makes the story aggravating. If the author wanted us to hate her book, she's succeeded.
Back to the dialogue. As I mentioned, the narrative is a bit appalling. I think the worst is just some of the actual quotes. I'm including them, just so you can understand my reasoning. We have a super important memory of one character recognizing his classmate's mother, because she once brought cupcakes late to a birthday party.
"His mouth a knife. His tongue and a picture frame and a slammed car door."
"Christina grabbed a rock and pulled back her arm and hurled it at Ryan's window. A rock the size of a plum. A tangerine, an apple."
The conclusion of this book absolutely ruins me. I struggled and it pained me to read every page of this, but the conclusion just made me want to burn this book to the ground. I don’t recommend it. If you’re looking for a book with sentiments about school shootings, please look elsewhere. I highly recommend "Only Child" by Rhiannon Navin.
I received a complementary copy for reviewing purposes. Thank you to William Morrow for the opportunity.
No comments:
Post a Comment