15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eloquent, honest, beautifully crafted and very timely., September 25, 1999
By A Customer
In 1999, this book could not be more a propos. . Goneboy succeeds on so many levels- it is a wonderful narrative, a love story, a crime novel, a revenge fantasy, an open-minded dialectic on guns and violence, and, even, as a detracting reader put it, an "angry journal." Of course anger permeates the story - Gibson's son has been murdered. But this anger is not self-righteous; rather, it is a catalyst for humor, insight, self-searching, and transformation.
What makes this book so compelling is that Gibson, as much he is willing to follow the momentum of his rage for long periods of time, has a keen enough mind to ultimately be conscious of the problems of living in anger. His interviews of the people familiar with the murder case may be motivated by obsessiveness but they are also learning experiences for him - and for the reader.
Gibson's writing is mellifluous and poetic, a rare example of non-fiction literature. His structure is remarkable in that it is unconventional, starting and stopping at different places, the whole while remaining seamless. I wish I could mention an aspect of the book that failed - if only to appear more objective - but none comes across that doesn't seem nit-picky or forced.
Gibson's exquisite candor- his ability to bare the painful truths of his sometimes nearly insane state of mind - is not alienating at all, rather, it helps to fully realize Gibson as a character and make it even easier to give the reader a chance to fully occupy his shoes. Gibson's love for his son, his anger, his sense of wit, his insanity, his catharsis, is, at least for a while, ours. His book is almost altruistic in that we benefit so much from his profound searching without having to suffer such a huge loss. I personally cannot even comprehend losing someone the way Gibson has but that did not prevent me from huge emotional upheaval and acquiring significant wisdom while reading this book. Which leads me to believe that it would be almost impossible for family survivors of gun violence - of which, unfortunately, there have recently been many - not to find anything in this book that might assist them in their own grieving process.
How does one deal with the juggernaut of feelings of injustice, rage, grief, loss, love, nausea, cynicism, and depression that ultimately follow senseless killings? Incredibly, this book seems to provide many answers.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing, July 7, 2000
This is an excellent self-portrait of one man's reaction to the violent death of his son. Readers expecting a true crime book in the current fashion will be disappointed. There are no great revelations, no detectives working to break the case, no shocking photographs. That is both its strength and its weakness ... it is far more honest than most true crime books, far less likely to try to wrench emotional reactions out of the reader. On the other hand, wading through other people's grief is edifying, but exhausting.
I left Simon's Rock the year before the shooting. Nothing surprised me much in the parts of the book dealing directly with Simon's Rock; the administration's actions (or lack thereof), and perhaps not even the shooting itself. The school, as another reviewer noted, was very much a sealed organism and prone to sealing off against the unwanted. Wayne Lo and his friends (for whom the idea of shooting someone was a way of relieving stress, not something to be actually *done*) were reacting, I think, to just that tendency.
It should be noted that, as Gibson says at the end of the book, that Wayne's parents are suffering the worst. They have lost their son without losing him.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must Read, September 20, 1999
By A Customer
I was a friend of Galen's (Greg's son) at Simon's Rock. While this book was very helpful to me in filling in the details of the events that led up to Galen's murder, and in helping me confront my own issues of sadness and anger surrounding the issue, I feel this book is an important read for people who were not involved as well. I hope a lot of people read it. I hope the parents of children who have been victims of shootings around the country (there have been too many, Littleton sticks out because of the scale, but I recall the stories if not the towns of several more over the last 2-3 years...) also read it, and maybe it will help them, too... and give them an idea of quests they could embark upon to help them with their grief. I hope the public at large reads this book and understands that there are deep, complex stories behind every shooting spree that appears on the television news. Maybe this book will inspire more people to humanize these issues in the media and political arenas. Finally, I hope this book brings a little bit of my friend, Galen, to a world of readers who can glimpse just a bit of the person who was so prematurely taken from this world... (Note: I disagree with the reader who gave this book one star, it was not an angry book, though Greg does discuss his anger, and his personal psychological journey that is part of his overall "Walkabout"... and it is only as fragmented and uneven as the real-life story behind it, it is an honest approach, it is well written, and it works...)
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