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A review by tinybluepixel
In These Hallowed Halls by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Mass/school shootings
Well.
As short story collections go, this was, as usual, a mixed bag.
The biggest draws for the average reader are probably Olivie Blake and M.L. Rio, with me personally liking Rio's story the best, actually (we love victimless crimes in this house!), while I thought that while Blake's story was good, it wasn't necessarily dark academia (it was an examination of AI and the relationships people had with it, leaning more towards Science Fiction than anything else, with the fact that it takes place in a university probably being the only thing "dark acacemia" about it).
Where this collection does fail is in disclosing the massive trigger in the middle of the book. Called "Four Funerals" and written by David Bell, this story takes some of the most notorious school shooters in history, puts them in a blender to make "Tyler", and then tries to show from a perspective of a teacher how horrible school shootings are.
I get it. I get the point they were trying to make.
I was in a school shooting.
Inspired by the Columbine shooters' essays on massacres that teacher's actually DID read and graded and gave back without "alerting the authorities" (because Columbine was the blueprint.), "Four Funerals" is about a teacher and the shooter's mother struggling with survivor's guilt in the aftermath of the shooting while visiting the funerals of the murdered students.
Nothing prepared me for this. And because of the very nature of short stories, you are tossed into the story without preparation or exposition and suddenly I'm back in that classroom, and all the phones are ringing because of parents trying to reach us, and we are huddling in the corner trying to get away from doors and windows -
You get it.
I was blindsided. I really, really enjoyed this book - until "Four Funerals."
I don't really know what to say. Thanks for the ARC?
It's time to put trigger warnings in books.