A review by pearloz
How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister

3.0

OK novel about a contemporary issue (school shootings) and it's aftermath (as experienced by one person) in a small community (viewed through her lens which is...erratic). It is a typical school-shooting scenario: disaffected youth/maybe an incel who knows, takes out his rage at random schoolmates. The tone of the book is somber. Our narrator had been been forced from her position as a teacher before the incident, and is immediately seen as a suspect subsequent to it. She is innocent and released after some time, and the rest of the novel is about her: her restlessness, her need for...something to tether her to reality (which becomes increasingly...off from her perspective). The book seems, at large, to be about paranoia, over-correction in the light of a tragedy (safety monitoring drones, armed teachers and select students, etc.), but the message is diluted as our messenger believes the sun has literally abandoned the town, joins a cult and is too lazy for it, and sort of drifts in a lazy haze. Getting drunk with the armed "militia" that takes over the clock tower for no purpose was really the final straw in terms of her credibility, and she'd long before blown any empathy for herself. I think the most interesting parts of the book were the chapters dedicated to her memorials to the dead. Chapters described as tips for being safe were absurd.