A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy - Sue Klebold

I've been putting of writing this review. Reading A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy left me feeling pretty raw. 

In April 1999, I was well ensconced at my freshman year at college. I had graduated from an all-girls Catholic High School in Cincinnati. The fact that I had once been to Colorado to visit the US Air Force Academy is about as familiar as I was with Columbine, in that I knew it was also in Colorado. Like basically anyone else at the time (which seems quaint now, by the way), this kind of act seemed beyond imagination to me. How could something like this possibly happen? I have never been the kind of person hungry for macabre details. Honoring victims by hearing their names and reading their stories yet, but I don't want to know the details of their last moments. And I'm extremely uninterested in providing the perpetrators of such acts with a platform to spew their demented hatred.

But then this. This book. Which does nothing of the above except to lay open bare the fallout such an action has on the family left behind. I, like probably a lot of people at the time, gave barely any thought to the Klebold's except to assume they did something terribly wrong to raise and not recognize such a predator in their midst. But with age comes something like wisdom (if by wisdom, I mean that I actually realize I'm not quite as smart as I thought I was, and I get a lot of things wrong). 

So here I was, willing to accept that Sue Klebold may have something vital to say. And willing to listen because as the mother of a six year old boy, who will someday be a teenager, who will one day go to High School, who will hopefully someday leave that high school without having to fear for his life, or consider taking his own, or someone else's - I may learn something important.

And I did. Learn something important. Maybe not specifically about me per se, but about the depths of deception people go to hide pain and anger. About how the children you have are known and utterly unknown to you at the same time. I should have known this. A lesson from my own teenage years, about what I shared and what I hid. Something not unlike the carefully cultivated social media identities we all create. Glennon Doyle said in Love Warrior that she spent a lot of time sending out her "representative" to interact with the world, protecting her true self. My own representative got me through high school. Sometimes still gets me through awkward parent events. 

Dylan Klebold sent his representative out into the world, allowing only a journal and perhaps Eric Harris to know the depths of his despair. Certainly his parents were never aware. Only now, Sue Klebold realizes there were definite signs she missed - things she passed over as typical teenage mood swings. She reassured herself that everything was fine. And inside her boy, the child they referred to as their "Sunshine Boy" was dying. And in his place, a callous unfeeling person took root. A person who wanted to die, who cared so little about living, the manner of his death (who he took with him) meant nothing. 

That a mother would still grieve her child, even after such a hideous act, seems obvious. I am constantly telling my children that I love them no matter what. No matter how they act or what they do, to reassure them when they've lost control of themselves that my love can be an anchor to hold them in place or bring them back, help them fight against the currents. But it's not enough. Sue Klebold has told me it's not enough. Because she knows. And the price she paid (and many children paid) for that knowledge is unthinkable.

4/5 Stars. 

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins

For a final book of the year, Into the Water by Paula Hawkins did not disappoint. I had read and liked, for the most part, Girl on the Train a couple of years ago  (you can read that review here). Despite not liking the main character in that book, Hawkins writing was strong and the plot was well laid out. 

The same can be said for Into the Water. While it may suffer from a few too many narrative voices, Into the Water is a double murder mystery. 

Nell Abbott has died in the drowning pool, a bend of a river where witches were once sentenced to death and drowned. Nell has a bit of a fascination with the spot and the women who have died there, Lizzy Seaton, a young 16th Century girl condemned for withcrafter, Anne Reed, a murderous wife, Lauren Townsend, a distraught and spurned mother, and finally Katie Whittaker, a young classmate of Nell's daughter, Leena. (I listened to the audio of this one, I never know quite how to spell names).

Nell's sister, Jules has arrived in town to take charge of her 15 year old niece, Leena. Jules and Nell were estranged and the circumstances were not good. But that's nothing compared to all the baggage people in this town are carrying. 

Illicit affairs, old grudges, twisted senses of protection - it's all there in this small town and it all works to first mask and then unravel the mystery of Katie and then Nell's death. Hawkins piece-meal deals out her facts and hints like a miser and then in a rush develops the secrets into plot twists. I was entertained even after I had figured it all out, until I hadn't. So that was fun. 

I'm glad to have made my reading goal. Especially because a bad case of plantar fasciitis kept me off the running kick that has fueled the last two years of my audiobook consumption.

4/5 Stars. 

Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

Ah revenge suicide. I'll kill myself and then everyone will be sorry. That's pretty much my biggest beef with Thirteen Reasons Why. It's every middle/high schoolers revenge suicide fantasy. But it's playing out in a way that works for the person who kills themselves. Hannah lives on posthumously through cassette tapes and haunts those she blames for her death. It's wickedly unfair to several people on the tapes, notably the other narrator Clay Jensen. Who's biggest crime was that he didn't "save" Hannah. 

And as annoying as Clay's sometimes overly descriptive narrative is, he's the only person who really makes counterpoints to the revenge suicide - if you're bothering to listen to him. Eg. - telling Hannah she didn't have a funeral, which I believe would be a big upset for someone looking to have people hand wringing and heart rending at their funeral after their suicide plays out. He also is the only one who consistently fights back against Hannah's assertion that people had a chance to save her and didn't take it. 

I don't want to victim blame here, because Hannah was an unlikeable character, but it wasn't due to any kind of woe is me mentality. A lot of crappy things happen to her in high school. Things that would be handled in a multitude of different ways by different people. So I'm not down on Hannah for ultimately deciding killing herself was the only option. But blaming other people and going out in a raging audio-taped glory was just a bit much. Since one of the people she blamed was a friend who believed a rumor and thus ended the friendship is then horribly raped while Hannah bears silent witness in a closet, yet somehow Hannah can't get over herself enough to think about other people. So the entire time Hannah is so mad that people aren't seeing the "real" Hannah, but she completely fails to offer the same thing to anyone else in the book. Except Clay. The nice guy narrator of the story. His sterling reputation is deserved. Yet Hannah still makes him listen to about (I'm unclear just how long these audiotapes of Hannah's are supposed to be) 8 hours of blaming others just to tell him that actually she doesn't blame him at all. But he's part of her "story". 

Overall the premise of the book is so problematic and poorly executed that I had to give it two stars. It's a book intended for the same demographic which currently can't stop eating Tide Pods. It doesn't come with enough nuance or depth to actually get to the heart of the matter or to give young adults the tools they need to digest it.

So what did I like about it? (see that's Hannah voice there). Well, the split narrative works pretty well (discounting the sections where Clay's repetitive interjections are awkward). And the timeline works to unravel the story.

2/5 Stars.