A Mother’s Reckoning.
When I finished this, I returned it to the library..I knew I would be purchasing my own copy to highlight and write in it. I gleaned a ton from this book, I highly recommend it to open-minded compassionate readers (if you think she’s responsible for her sons actions and that it is a closed case ..don’t bother) it’s an amazing story of grief, guilt, anxiety and rage. It shows us at our worst and absolute best. It’s a reminder for me of my good friend’s quote “Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau : same parents...be careful how you judge one another’s parenting .” The book makes you see the tragedy in a whole new light, and you learn how skewed the media makes things. Not that we did not know this.
Mentioned in the above book is the book Columbine by Dave Cullen. I got this from the library several months after reading A Mother’s Reckoning. I needed time to let that one sit. He writes a very detailed account and does a great job of researching and explaining the events, and the reporting that was incorrect, and the nature of the boys who committed the murders. One suicidal and one a true psychopath, the subtype that would murder. The book is very well done. It makes you watch the news differently knowing how off reporting can be.
Finally, I saw that the book this is where it ends by Marieke Nijkamp was gaining popularity among YA readers, so I put it on hold at the library and picked it up last week. Not knowing what the book was about I was surprised it was about a shooting in a high school. The kids reading it weren’t even born when Columbine happened. I could read this book in a couple of afternoons and although I like the idea of the timeline and the different perspectives narrating the story, it fell flat. There was no emotion, you couldn’t get a real feel for the characters and there were a lot of clichés in the book. It didn’t feel real. I could not connect to it. However, I was alive on April 20, 1999. I was a parent of a child in school. The events were so horrific and so extensively covered, we lived with it along with the rest of the nation. That being said, I do not believe this particular book is done well. It could still work for discussion, because talking it out is always preferable. Dialog is always good. May we someday live in a world where school shootings never happen.
Peace.
