FAIR WARNING — I am about to discuss a book I read. It WILL NOT be spoiler free, so if such things bother you then please skip this post.
I finished this book over the weekend. More accurately I started it Saturday afternoon while the boys were napping and stayed up and finished it Saturday night. I always enjoy Picoult’s writing, but the subject matter of this book — a school shooting — would not let go of me. I wasn’t putting this book down until it was done. It’s (one of) every parent’s nightmares, isn’t it? To hear that there was a shooting at your child’s school. And then, imagine that it was your child, your sweet baby, that did the shooting. Who walked into their school and started shooting at their classmates and teachers. Picoult writes from several voices, as she usually (always?) does. In this case, the voices are those of the shooter, his mother, another student, her mother-who happens to be the judge who will be hearing the trial, the detective in charge of investigating the case, and the shooter’s defense attorney.
The kid is bullied starting from the first time he sets foot on a school bus, every day right up until the day he pulls a pistol out of his backpack and shoots. The school administration turns a blind eye to it, his mother doesn’t know how to help him, his brother is one of his worst tormentors.
Eh. I don’t really want to talk about the plotline. I want to talk about the utter lack of communication that led up to the shooting and through it’s aftermath. Peter withdraws into his room and his computer, his mom assumes it is normal adolesent angst and doesn’t push him. Josie, the judge’s daughter, gets straight A’s and is part of the “in” crowd, and her mother doesn’t try to look past the outer perfection to see that her daughter has no one she considers a real friend, and that her boyfriend is abusive to her. She’s even completely unaware when her daughter gets pregnant and has a miscarriage.
What I want to figure out is, how do the babies we give birth to, and the toddlers whose every freckle and scraped knee and like and dislike we know turn into such complete strangers in a few short years. How do people not notice when their children are being bullied and abused, or when they are bullying and abusing others? Why are people so disconnected from each other? One of the survivors of Peter’s spree sends him a letter in prison –I always liked your smile, she writes, and I would have liked to be your friend. So why didn’t she? Why not walk up to him after class one day and talk to him. Why is it so damn hard for people to connect with each other, to just be kind to each other. I know this story is fictional…but the emotions it’s stirring up are not. The fact that so many people feel isolated and alone, even in a room full of people is not. And I don’t think it has to be that way.
