Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Simon Lelic's Rupture

I read the Finnish translation of Simon Lelic's Rupture (A Thousand Cuts seems to be the US title) book and wrote a review of it for the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. I liked it quite a bit, but not enough to keep it on my shelves. It's a frightening tale of a teacher who kills four pupils, one teacher and then himself. Lelic, whose debut novel this is, writes the first half of the book mostly through fragments and witness testimonies which makes for a compelling read, but the second half is marred by a didactic tone and an ending that's way too upbeat. It's simplistic and makes one hope Lelic wouldn't have pulled his punches this way.

Recommended, though, if you're into serious British crime writing or the topic of school shootings. It's interesting to me, since I've been having these dreams of... writing something about school shootings (a publisher actually once proposed I'd write a novel of a school shooting, but nothing came of it).

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