Customer Reviews

School Shooting

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I picked up a copy of School Shooting after reading Ben Jonjak's brilliant novel Thief, and I must say, School Shooting is every bit as good. As a resident of Lima, I have often wondered about the lunacy that contributes to the young students of America buying guns and assassinating their classmates. Jonjak engages this topic with detached precision and has the courage to point the finger of blame at the one group that has been almost universally ignored by the media, parents and teachers. This book is a great insight into American culture, and would probably show a lot even to American's themselves.

First off, this book needed serious editing. I'm not someone who normally notices things like this, but this...wow. So many spelling and grammar errors - and however much the author says he's "just making the English language work for him" and thumbs his nose to the "pseudo-intellectuals" who dare to mention these flaws - he's not making it work at all.

Second, this book wasn't really a novel at all. It's a rant on all the things that are wrong with society. The author spends several pages ranting about the unfairness of school testing, then mentions that his main character takes this test, then goes back to more ranting for another page or two...and the whole book is like this. It's all tell, with no show - he's hardly ever inside his own character's head. Woven between the rants, we're told what everyone in the book is feeling/thinking, but we don't get to experience it for ourselves. And too often, it isn't even about the characters, but only about the author himself.

The author has a lot to say about American society, (and a lot of it needs to be said far more than it is), I just wish he'd managed to write it in a more compelling way.

Be warned, this book is very dark and disturbing and I'm not sure it would really do anybody any good to read. It does have its interesting points. But it is an independently published book which means sparce editing and radical content. Before you by this or any other idependently published book, you should make sure you know what you're getting into.
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