A review by an_enthusiastic_reader
How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister

5.0

With writing that is reminiscent of Don DeLillo and AM Holmes and maybe a touch of Tom Perotta, this novel encapsulates our current culture and its violence and dread. The main character is a depressed and terrified woman and the novel shows her inner thoughts about being a woman in a world that doesn't know how to accept women as human, about the proliferation of guns and shootings and meaningless memorials to the dead, about the futility of institutions to ward off the worst of our inclinations. I can't say to every person I know Hey, you should read this novel. It won't appeal to most readers, and it's triggering and bleak. But it is representative our world. This is us.