Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by phoeberga
Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down by Anne Valente
2.0
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.