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3.01 AVERAGE
3.01 AVERAGE
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I won an ARC of this book from LibraryThing. It was a really interesting, well written book. It is the story of four high school juniors, friends who put together the yearbook, who survive a terrible school shooting that kills 35 students and teachers. They are all in different places and have different experiences during that morning and the author does a great job of portraying how they each deal with their feelings about what happened. As if the shooting wasn't enough, the homes of the families of the students killed began to catch fire. The families of the victims are all killed by the fire and in a mysterious twist there are no remains found at any of the fires. The resolution of this mystery - if you can call it that - definitely requires some belief in the supernatural. Not only do you not get a true resolution about the fires, you never do find out what triggered the student gunman in the first place. The lack of true reason for both crimes is the only thing that I would change about this otherwise interesting and though provoking book.
It was very well written the author has a way of capturing your attention through the characters. I would've liked more of an explanation of "who" or "what" caused these "situations" to happen, but that's just me. And life does some times doesn't have a clear answer.
I wanted to like this book, but couldn't finish it. It just dragged. There was not any real dialogue, per se. Instead, it was written like an ongoing investigation.
Anne Valente´s short story collection By Light We Knew Our Names is one of my all time favorite books, so as soon as I heard that she was coming out with a novel I got very exited. The story focuses on four friends who work together on their high school year book and how their town faces tragedies beyond imagining, a school shooting followed by unexplained house fires.
First of all I must say that I´m quite fed up with following the lives of teenagers. Valente does describe their struggles and feelings very well and none of the characters is unbearably annoying. Still I just didn´t always feel like getting in the head of a sixteen-year-old. Everything in that age is overly dramatic and depressing even without the tragedies. The subject is indeed sad, and there seems to be no light between the accidents. Sometimes I had to put the book down as I started to feel too distressed. I also wasn´t satisfied with the ending, the whole book slowly builds up for some big revel that doesn´t really come and think that some extra bits of action could have improved the story.
But there´s a lot that I loved about Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down. Valente´s writing is just as incredible as it is in her short stories. It pulls you in, no matter the problems the story itself might have. Switching from one view point to another goes fluently and I didn´t think that there´s too many characters. Between the actual chapters Valente has included these short news clippings, character profiles and breathtakingly beautifully written descriptions of subjects like the way our brains work and the physics of fire, that gave well needed breaks from the story while also making the book feel more interesting. The themes though depressing, are extremely important as well. I thought they were handled well, but as my personal knowledge of the kind of suffering and fear the characters go through is non-existent, I´m definitely not the expert. And for that I should be thankful.
So I feel a bit conflicted - there are a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I didn´t like. But in the end I came to the conclusion that overall I did enjoy Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down. It for sure gave me plenty to think about and told a story that´s going to be very hard to forget.
First of all I must say that I´m quite fed up with following the lives of teenagers. Valente does describe their struggles and feelings very well and none of the characters is unbearably annoying. Still I just didn´t always feel like getting in the head of a sixteen-year-old. Everything in that age is overly dramatic and depressing even without the tragedies. The subject is indeed sad, and there seems to be no light between the accidents. Sometimes I had to put the book down as I started to feel too distressed. I also wasn´t satisfied with the ending, the whole book slowly builds up for some big revel that doesn´t really come and think that some extra bits of action could have improved the story.
But there´s a lot that I loved about Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down. Valente´s writing is just as incredible as it is in her short stories. It pulls you in, no matter the problems the story itself might have. Switching from one view point to another goes fluently and I didn´t think that there´s too many characters. Between the actual chapters Valente has included these short news clippings, character profiles and breathtakingly beautifully written descriptions of subjects like the way our brains work and the physics of fire, that gave well needed breaks from the story while also making the book feel more interesting. The themes though depressing, are extremely important as well. I thought they were handled well, but as my personal knowledge of the kind of suffering and fear the characters go through is non-existent, I´m definitely not the expert. And for that I should be thankful.
So I feel a bit conflicted - there are a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I didn´t like. But in the end I came to the conclusion that overall I did enjoy Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down. It for sure gave me plenty to think about and told a story that´s going to be very hard to forget.
There's something about a first person plural narrative that very rarely works outside of a Greek tragedy. There are, of course, exceptions but [i]Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down[/i] is not one of them.
The book deals with the aftermath of a school shooting that takes place in Fall 2003 and is set against the background of the early days of the Iraq War and a country still reeling from 9/11. This feels like it should mean something but it doesn't. A group of four high school students who are on the yearbook committee narrate the book as one.
There's no doubt that this is a horrific subject to cover. School shootings are awful and unfathomable events. What makes someone pick up a gun and walk into a school full of their peers with the sole intention of killing? We'll never truly know. I can only imagine the horror and the grief of being caught up in such an event; the fear, the devastation, the survivor's guilt. The four main characters clearly go through such emotions but the impact is lost by the first person plural narration. This is something that has happened to them as a collective. The individual is lost. This effect is worsened by the complete lack of dialogue. We, as readers, feel entirely disconnected from the horror of the events and the emotions of the community.
The narrative also made it difficult for me to connect with any of the characters. At times I found the main characters dull, if not downright irritating. Why did they care so much about the yearbook when so many of their classmates had just been gunned down in cold-blood? Equally, the victims themselves just felt like names at times. There are character profiles of some of the victims, written by the yearbook committee for posterity, but not all of the victims. They all get names but they don't all get stories.
As for the shooter, he too is only a name. There is no why. Maybe this was intentional but the lack of speculation about his motive is bizarre. Frankly this is where I thought the 2003 setting might become relevant but it never did. I'm still not sure why the story is set in 2003. This was obviously a deliberate decision on the part of the author but it seems to have no real bearing on the story itself. I generally believe that if you're going to deliberately set a story in a specific time-period there must be a reason behind it that directly relates to the story you are trying to tell. The only reason I could come up with in [i]Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down[/i] is that the yearbook committee are apparently narrating this story from some point in their futures, long after they have left high school behind but, again, this hardly seems to matter to the story. They don't reflect on the events or how they altered their lives.
If I'm being entirely honest, there were moments throughout the book that made me feel uncomfortable and not because the subject matter is uncomfortable by default. The library was one of those things. It's impossible (for me, at least) to read a book about a school shooting without the ghost of Columbine there, ever present in the background. I wish Columbine hadn't become synonymous with school shootings for me but it has. However, the echoes of Columbine felt more like parallels at times and left a sour taste.
As for the mysterious housefires, these felt entirely redundant and the scientific fact interludes, which suggested this subplot was going somewhere, were extremely dull and served no purpose (much like the house fires). A school shooting in itself is devastating. It just wasn't necessary to have a secondary tragedy, although I will admit that the housefires and the promise of a resolution to the mystery are partly what kept me reading. Unfortunately, this later proved to be misguided and in the end this book just left me cold.
The book deals with the aftermath of a school shooting that takes place in Fall 2003 and is set against the background of the early days of the Iraq War and a country still reeling from 9/11. This feels like it should mean something but it doesn't. A group of four high school students who are on the yearbook committee narrate the book as one.
There's no doubt that this is a horrific subject to cover. School shootings are awful and unfathomable events. What makes someone pick up a gun and walk into a school full of their peers with the sole intention of killing? We'll never truly know. I can only imagine the horror and the grief of being caught up in such an event; the fear, the devastation, the survivor's guilt. The four main characters clearly go through such emotions but the impact is lost by the first person plural narration. This is something that has happened to them as a collective. The individual is lost. This effect is worsened by the complete lack of dialogue. We, as readers, feel entirely disconnected from the horror of the events and the emotions of the community.
The narrative also made it difficult for me to connect with any of the characters. At times I found the main characters dull, if not downright irritating. Why did they care so much about the yearbook when so many of their classmates had just been gunned down in cold-blood? Equally, the victims themselves just felt like names at times. There are character profiles of some of the victims, written by the yearbook committee for posterity, but not all of the victims. They all get names but they don't all get stories.
As for the shooter, he too is only a name. There is no why. Maybe this was intentional but the lack of speculation about his motive is bizarre. Frankly this is where I thought the 2003 setting might become relevant but it never did. I'm still not sure why the story is set in 2003. This was obviously a deliberate decision on the part of the author but it seems to have no real bearing on the story itself. I generally believe that if you're going to deliberately set a story in a specific time-period there must be a reason behind it that directly relates to the story you are trying to tell. The only reason I could come up with in [i]Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down[/i] is that the yearbook committee are apparently narrating this story from some point in their futures, long after they have left high school behind but, again, this hardly seems to matter to the story. They don't reflect on the events or how they altered their lives.
If I'm being entirely honest, there were moments throughout the book that made me feel uncomfortable and not because the subject matter is uncomfortable by default. The library was one of those things. It's impossible (for me, at least) to read a book about a school shooting without the ghost of Columbine there, ever present in the background. I wish Columbine hadn't become synonymous with school shootings for me but it has. However, the echoes of Columbine felt more like parallels at times and left a sour taste.
As for the mysterious housefires, these felt entirely redundant and the scientific fact interludes, which suggested this subplot was going somewhere, were extremely dull and served no purpose (much like the house fires). A school shooting in itself is devastating. It just wasn't necessary to have a secondary tragedy, although I will admit that the housefires and the promise of a resolution to the mystery are partly what kept me reading. Unfortunately, this later proved to be misguided and in the end this book just left me cold.
One of the most beautiful, heartbreaking, arresting novels you will ever read. There are elements of mystery and magic, tragedy and hope. It is a love letter to St. Louis and a delicately rendered portrait of grief.
Amazing story. This will stay with me and haunt me. Beautifully written.
I don’t actually finish this. It was not very interesting or well written and I gave up.
This was awful. I couldn't connect with the characters at all. The emotional aspect of this book should have been the best part, and it felt so underplayed. The writing alternated between "trying too hard to be literary" and "crappy sentence fragments", which was really jarring and made it impossible to stay engaged with the book.
The central mystery - that of the fires - is not resolved in a satisfying way. Considering that the mystery is the only reason I kept reading, this is not okay.
The central mystery - that of the fires - is not resolved in a satisfying way. Considering that the mystery is the only reason I kept reading, this is not okay.