Rupture (edition 2010)

What an awesome book this was. Getting across its message about bullying in large organisations with a minimum of fuss - much of it done though interview transcripts - it proved you don't need lots of "he said, she said" etc and you don't need lots of detail about facial expression. The different characters in this novel emerge through their voice alone, and each one is three dimensional. I was initially disappointed when the first chapter came to an end and I realised its gloriously sweary narrator wouldn't appear again, but all the other characters were brilliant too. An absolute masterclass in showing not telling, and great writing in general. ( )

"Rupture" picks an interesting and difficult subject to explore (school/workplace shootings), and seems to be reaching for pull-quotes lauding its "shockingly brutal" violence, the "heartrending horror" of shattered survivor stories, capped by "profoundly moving" insights into the underlying cultures of bullying which can breed these tragic events. Unfortunately, it falls short on most of these goals, settling for tepid, inane, and inconclusive.

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). ( )

A THOUSAND CUTS by Simon Lelic is not what many of its reviews claimed in 2010 and 11.

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 shooting, pages and pages of this book are nothing but wasted words that had nothing to do with anyone or anything that mattered to the story.

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. ( )

Lelic's debut, excellent story. A shooting at a school in London, 3 students, one teacher, and the perp (suicide with the last bullet), are all dead. Should be open and shut. But DI Lucia initiates a series of interviews with students, teachers, parents. She listens - there is no dialogue in these interviews, we hear only the respondent's narration, a very clever and appropriate style. The story is about bullies. But even as Lucia investigates at the schoolyard, she is also subject to bullying from a small cadre of her own colleagues, led by Walter, an obnoxious, foul-mouthed groping fellow officer. Reviews of Lelic's second novel, The Facility, are not as glowing, but The Child Who will be published in late 2/12. ( )

Couldn't get past page 20. ( )