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Fiction. Literature. HTML:A stunning debut novel that unravels the hidden story behind a school shooting It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May- the only woman in her high-testosterone office in the Criminal Investigations Department-begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges, calling into question the innocence of others. But no one, including Lucia's boss, is interested. As the pressure to close the case builds and her colleagues' sexism takes a sinister turn, Lucia begins to realize that she has more in common with the killer than she could have imagined, and she becomes deter�mined to expose the truth. Brilliantly interweaving the witnesses' accounts with Lucia's own perspective, A Thousand Cuts is a narrative tour de force from a formidable new voice in fiction.… (more)
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Needless to say, May is under pressure from her boss to close the case; he gives her another day. Being the only female detective at the station also causes problems. She's being bullied by one of the other detectives who is very old school. She's also recently split up with her boyfriend too, so she has a lot on her plate.
I can't tell you more without ruining the suspense for despite knowing the outcome, the journey is eventful. The novel is structured so that interleaved with Lucia's investigation are the statements from witnesses, pupils, staff and parents. These are presented as dictated monologues, and you gradually hear all the facets of the story through them. Although many stereotypes are present, from the class bully to the psychopath PE teacher, the ineffectual deskbound DCI and the men's world of station banter, they are handled well. Lucia is a likeable lead who can usually stand up for herself, but has a vulnerable side too.
An enjoyable debut. (Book supplied by Amazon Vine).
Lelic has employed an unusual structure for this novel. When not speaking as Lucia May, he alternates between the voices of the various supporting characters. This reveals Lelic to be a deft and captivating writer, easily able to change voice at the turn of a page.
This novel is something of the zeitgeist. On one hand we have a headmaster who ignored activities in the school in order to maintain a high profile while on the other hand we have stories of young children cruelly bullying others. It somehow captures the societal breakdown that many feel is endemic in our modern world.
Rupture is a shocking and riveting story which is exceptionally well written. Not only is it a police novel but it pushes and investigates society and bullying. An amazing read.
I was hooked on this book from the very first page, and found it a compelling read throughout. I got through it really quickly, and felt that I wanted to be reading it all the time and finding out more about the case and what drove the teacher to do what he did. The story is written in alternating chapters, being first a tape recorded testimony and then a chapter about Lucia and the investigation. I thought this was a clever device to enable the reader to discover more about the teacher's motives as the story unfolded, and a bit of a change from the norm.
The author also managed somehow to get across the horror of the bullying without being sentimental. I was shocked at the lengths some of the characters went to to persecute other people and could really appreciate how awful that level of bullying must be.
I found this an excellent read and will be looking out for more from Simon Lelic. His writing flows very well, and certainly drew this reader into what is an interesting and engrossing story.
The blurb on the back of the edition I read begins:
It should be an open-and-shut
From a police point of view, it looks like a case that you can wrap up quickly. Samuel Szajkowski walked into the assembly and opened fire. He is to blame for the deaths of 5 people including himself. Detective Inspector Lucia May is given the job of interviewing the witnesses and writing up the final report.
But then Lucia begins to ask why? What pushed Samuel Szajowski over the edge? Who is really to blame? And just who is pushing her boss to get the case wrapped up?
Events like this one have happened in "real life" world wide in recent years, and A THOUSAND CUTS leads us to ask whether the investigators really ever get to the point of understanding the "why".
We know right from the beginning that there is something wrong with the culture of this school. The basic structure of the novel is transcripts of interviews by the investigators with witnesses, and the very first one is with a student who should have been at the assembly but was "down by the ponds, pissing about.."
The interview transcripts are really one-sided conversations. The reader is left to deduce the questions being asked from the actual answers. It is a very arresting narrative technique.
Detective Inspector Lucia May unearths a culture of bullying that extends throughout the entire school: student to student, student to teacher, teacher to student, and teacher to teacher. The worst part is that those who should be preventing the existence of this culture, the principal for example, don't see that as their responsibility. But even the parents don't recognise the bullying happening.
Another aspect of the whole investigation is that Lucia May is herself the victim of bullying, in her personal life, and, in particular, her workplace. It makes us ask whether this is an endemic part of the Western society, regardless of the profession.
A very thought-provoking read.
I frequently felt conflicted while reading this book, yet not for the reasons presumably intended. Instead of trying to sort out my feelings toward the passively-good and assertively-nasty stereotypes on parade, I was struggling to understand the author's purpose in rehashing these sorry tales: what moral "takeaway" was being posited. This was the kind of book where you find yourself skimming as you near the end, not out of enthusiasm to reach the "thrilling conclusion", but simply to find out where the author is going with all this.
If twist endings are worth points, then I will freely confess that the destination, once reached, came as a complete shock. After slogging through 200 painful pages of remorseless diatribe against the evils of bullying, whether in the classroom or workplace, as directed against ginger kids, black kids, women, the ungainly, the mentally handicapped, and basically anyone other than a white male footballer -- we are stunned in the final pages to learn that it remains acceptable to bully homosexuals; in fact it can even be empowering! Whatever passages of powerful prose or moments of heightened tension the author achieved in the main story (and these were few) were sadly undone by the betrayal, not of character to protagonist, but author to reader, unveiled in the epilogue.
There are several ways an author can approach character-to-character conflict. The underdog can finally overpower or outwit their assailant, leaving the reader vicariously victorious ("win-lose"). Alternately, the conflicted parties can find common ground and set aside their differences, creating an equally satisfying sense of harmony and reconciliation ("win-win"). Less common in popular literature, for the simple reason that they're not fun to read, are the "lose-lose" scenarios in which no party goes home happy, or even worse the "lose-win" conclusion in which the bad guys carry the field. This is not to say that there can be no value in negative conclusions -- tragedies from Greece to Shakespeare to tear-jerker "chick flicks" teach us that we can find wisdom and closure in delving the depths of grief and [others':] misfortune.
Nevertheless, the point of presenting conflict, of immersing the reader in an ugly situation peopled by unprincipled perpetrators and heart-torn victims, is normally to show a path up out of the darkness -- a way to turn horror into victory, or at least a reason to go on living in spite of the pain and heartache which accompanies historically broken human life. Instead, the resolution this book presents is pitifully weak: ultimately amounting to either accepting the status quo (plenty of villians go unpunished, the weak continue to be abused, and nothing really changes); or unexpectedly, joining the abusers and carving out your own little niche of safety by beating down those who would threaten you.
This was not a message worth 300 pages to hear. I chose to read this book because I have a personal interest in the ongoing problem of school bullying, both as a father, former teacher -- and former student. This is a difficult and deep-seated problem which, given the dark roots of human nature, can probably never be completely solved. However, it most certainly can be forcibly addressed through clearly defined and disseminated policies which are unequivocally enforced by responsible and accountable adults in positions of authority.
That is to say, while there may be no silver bullet to magically eliminate bullying throughout our strata of state education, nor fully prevent prejudice and subtle harassment in the modern workplace, there are models of discipline and procedure which have been effectively demonstrated in successful environments which can be studied and reapplied in institutions needing improvement. It was with the hope of finding some such lessons explicated and promoted through narrative example that I picked up this book, accepting the misery and tabloid squalor of the early chapters as the presumed on-ramp to an escalation ultimately showing one or more proposed paths to resolution.
Sadly, the book's moral escalator was as broken-down as the majority of the characters, with the only path out being futile and ineffectual flailing, or joining with the oppressors. I choose to believe there are better solutions available, and that by failing to discuss them, this book is essentially a waste of time.
What remains, after the potential for productive social commentary is dispensed with, are cardboard caricatures with no compelling backstory; the only players for whom one might conceivably find empathy come to an ugly end before the curtains rise. The narrative structure (one-sided interview transcripts alternating with 3rd-person present action) is mildly interesting, but by no means unique or even particularly well-done. The prose is serviceable at best, the dialog wooden; at no point did a turn of phrase or impassioned parley strike me as melodic or rise above the stark requirements of syntax. I am also unsure that Mr. Lelic quite has the knack for convincingly writing from the perspective of a sexually harassed woman; though possibly I don't have the perspective to recognize when such a viewpoint is expressed correctly or not.
I give the result three stars: one for meeting the bare requirements of storytelling, a second for tackling a challenging yet important subject, and the third for making me angry enough at its inadequacies to think through the problem myself (generally speaking, not the most effective way for a book to raise social awareness if volume sales are also a desirement).
Booklist says in its starred review, "Lelic wastes not a word in this searing indictment of a culture inured to cruelty."
But that is not true. In every witness account of what led to and the day of a mass
Neither is this book "fast paced," as a "Most Helpful Customer Review" on amazon.com calls it. To the contrary, it is excessively wordy in its witness accounts mentioned above. But is not fast paced mostly because all the accounts of bullying and descriptions of sexual harassment lead to nothing.
Not a single character is this book is believable, and most seem exaggerated. Bullying and sexual harassment are real problems that need no exaggeration.
This is an honest reader review.