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Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost
An acclaimed author’s collection of short stories for fans of genre-bending fiction, Shot blends social impact fiction and activist fiction, tackling the gun violence crisis head on.
Anna argues with her mom about a school science award. Ben discovers in his seventh decade that he is Jewish. Chester searches for his little sister in a snowstorm. Dixie is pregnant with her second child.
Their stories and twenty-two others read like the ABC’s of everyday life. One way or another, the challenges that bring drama to our lives work themselves out, right? Or maybe not. Sometimes the ending isn’t at all what you expect.
Shot is a collection of short stories about gun violence, organized as a dictionary, with a story for each letter of the alphabet. Each life is precious. And life itself is to be celebrated.
Anna argues with her mom about a school science award. Ben discovers in his seventh decade that he is Jewish. Chester searches for his little sister in a snowstorm. Dixie is pregnant with her second child.
Their stories and twenty-two others read like the ABC’s of everyday life. One way or another, the challenges that bring drama to our lives work themselves out, right? Or maybe not. Sometimes the ending isn’t at all what you expect.
Shot is a collection of short stories about gun violence, organized as a dictionary, with a story for each letter of the alphabet. Each life is precious. And life itself is to be celebrated.
256 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 12, 2025
Jude Berman's "Shot - A Dictionary of the Lost" stands as one of the most structurally audacious and emotionally devastating short story collections to emerge in contemporary American literature. By organizing twenty-six interconnected stories alphabetically—each representing a victim of gun violence—Berman transforms the traditional short story collection into something more urgent: a literary memorial that demands attention to America's ongoing tragedy of gun violence.
The alphabetical structure serves multiple purposes beyond mere organization. It creates an encyclopedic quality that mirrors how we catalog and quantify violence in America, yet each letter represents not a statistic but a fully realized human being with dreams, fears, and relationships. This tension between systematic presentation and individual humanity becomes the collection's driving force, making each story both standalone and part of a larger, devastating whole.
Character Development and Narrative Mastery
Intimate Portraits in Crisis
Berman demonstrates remarkable skill in creating fully developed characters within the constraints of short fiction. Anna, the twelve-year-old science prodigy who wins her school award despite bullying, emerges as a complex young person grappling with self-doubt and family expectations. Benjamin, discovering his Jewish heritage in his seventies, represents the weight of hidden family histories. Nine-year-old Zoe, terrified of active shooter drills, embodies the anxiety that now defines childhood in America.
Each character feels authentic and lived-in, avoiding the trap of becoming merely symbolic vessels for the author's message. Berman achieves this through careful attention to internal monologue, realistic dialogue, and specific details that ground each story in recognizable reality. The reader becomes invested in these lives, making the inevitable tragic endings all the more powerful.
Diverse Perspectives and Voices
The collection spans ages, backgrounds, and circumstances, from four-year-old Wanda who tells stories to her doll Marigold, to Sage at sixty-three, to healthcare workers, students, and everyday people going about their routine lives. This diversity serves the collection's larger purpose of illustrating how gun violence affects all segments of American society, but it also showcases Berman's impressive range as a writer capable of inhabiting vastly different perspectives convincingly.
Thematic Depth and Social Commentary
The Normalization of Violence
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of "Shot" is how it captures the way gun violence has become normalized in American life. Characters navigate their days with an underlying awareness of potential danger—Ginger avoiding rallies, Owen staying away from movie theaters, children participating in active shooter drills. This background radiation of fear permeates the collection, creating an atmosphere where tragedy feels not shocking but inevitable.
The active shooter drill sequences, particularly in Zoe's story, are especially powerful in illustrating how we've adapted to prepare children for unthinkable violence. Berman captures both the surreal nature of these exercises and their psychological impact with devastating precision.
Hope Amid Horror
Despite its tragic subject matter, the collection is not without hope. The final story featuring Zoe ends with her determination to take action, messaging her friends in the middle of the night to organize against gun violence. This suggests that awareness and action, however small, might emerge from tragedy. Benjamin's discovery of his family history provides another form of hope—the possibility of understanding and honoring those who came before.
Literary Technique and Style
Prose and Pacing
Berman's prose is clean and accessible without sacrificing literary quality. She employs a different voice for each character while maintaining consistency across the collection. The pacing varies effectively—some stories build slowly to their tragic conclusions, while others thrust readers immediately into crisis situations.
The author's background in editing and publishing shows in the collection's tight construction. No word feels wasted, and each story contributes to the larger emotional arc of the book. The transitions between stories are particularly well-handled, with each alphabetical progression feeling natural rather than forced.
Structure as Meaning
The alphabetical organization creates a unique reading experience that enhances the collection's themes. Reading from A to Z creates a sense of systematic documentation, as if we're working through a comprehensive record of loss. Yet this systematic approach contrasts powerfully with the randomness and senselessness of the violence depicted.
The brief biographical statements that open each story ("I am Anna and I am a statistic...") serve as both memorial inscriptions and stark reminders of lives reduced to data points. This formatting choice reinforces the collection's central tension between individual humanity and statistical abstraction.
Emotional Impact and Reader Experience
Cumulative Effect
While individual stories are powerful, the collection's true impact emerges through accumulation. Reading twenty-six stories of gun violence creates an overwhelming emotional experience that mirrors the societal weight of this ongoing tragedy. By the final story, readers carry the emotional burden of all these fictional deaths, creating an understanding of loss that statistics alone cannot convey.
Accessibility Without Simplification
Berman manages to address an incredibly complex social issue without oversimplifying the political dimensions or resorting to easy answers. The stories focus on human experience rather than policy debates, making the collection accessible to readers across the political spectrum while still delivering a clear message about the need for change.
Historical and Contemporary Context
Literary Precedents
"Shot" joins a tradition of short story collections that address social issues through interconnected narratives, following in the footsteps of works like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" and more recently, books like "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. However, Berman's alphabetical structure and focus on gun violence make this collection uniquely contemporary and formally innovative.
Timeliness and Relevance
Published in 2025, "Shot" arrives at a moment when gun violence continues to dominate American headlines and policy discussions. The collection's focus on everyday victims rather than mass shooting events reflects the broader scope of gun violence in America, including the daily toll that receives less media attention.
Final Assessment
"Shot - A Dictionary of the Lost" succeeds both as a work of literary art and as a piece of social commentary. Berman has created something rare: a book that tackles one of America's most pressing issues without sacrificing narrative sophistication or emotional complexity. The alphabetical structure elevates what could have been a simple message-driven collection into something more architecturally ambitious and emotionally devastating.
This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how literature can address contemporary social crises. It's also a powerful example of how formal innovation can enhance rather than distract from a work's emotional and political impact. While the subject matter is undeniably heavy, the quality of the writing and the importance of the message make this a collection that demands attention.
Berman has given voice to the voiceless and created a memorial in prose that honors both individual lives and collective loss. In an era where gun violence has become numbingly routine, "Shot" restores the human dimension to tragedy and reminds us that behind every statistic is a person whose life mattered. This is fiction at its most socially engaged and formally inventive—a collection that will likely influence how writers approach difficult contemporary subjects for years to come.
The alphabetical structure serves multiple purposes beyond mere organization. It creates an encyclopedic quality that mirrors how we catalog and quantify violence in America, yet each letter represents not a statistic but a fully realized human being with dreams, fears, and relationships. This tension between systematic presentation and individual humanity becomes the collection's driving force, making each story both standalone and part of a larger, devastating whole.
Character Development and Narrative Mastery
Intimate Portraits in Crisis
Berman demonstrates remarkable skill in creating fully developed characters within the constraints of short fiction. Anna, the twelve-year-old science prodigy who wins her school award despite bullying, emerges as a complex young person grappling with self-doubt and family expectations. Benjamin, discovering his Jewish heritage in his seventies, represents the weight of hidden family histories. Nine-year-old Zoe, terrified of active shooter drills, embodies the anxiety that now defines childhood in America.
Each character feels authentic and lived-in, avoiding the trap of becoming merely symbolic vessels for the author's message. Berman achieves this through careful attention to internal monologue, realistic dialogue, and specific details that ground each story in recognizable reality. The reader becomes invested in these lives, making the inevitable tragic endings all the more powerful.
Diverse Perspectives and Voices
The collection spans ages, backgrounds, and circumstances, from four-year-old Wanda who tells stories to her doll Marigold, to Sage at sixty-three, to healthcare workers, students, and everyday people going about their routine lives. This diversity serves the collection's larger purpose of illustrating how gun violence affects all segments of American society, but it also showcases Berman's impressive range as a writer capable of inhabiting vastly different perspectives convincingly.
Thematic Depth and Social Commentary
The Normalization of Violence
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of "Shot" is how it captures the way gun violence has become normalized in American life. Characters navigate their days with an underlying awareness of potential danger—Ginger avoiding rallies, Owen staying away from movie theaters, children participating in active shooter drills. This background radiation of fear permeates the collection, creating an atmosphere where tragedy feels not shocking but inevitable.
The active shooter drill sequences, particularly in Zoe's story, are especially powerful in illustrating how we've adapted to prepare children for unthinkable violence. Berman captures both the surreal nature of these exercises and their psychological impact with devastating precision.
Hope Amid Horror
Despite its tragic subject matter, the collection is not without hope. The final story featuring Zoe ends with her determination to take action, messaging her friends in the middle of the night to organize against gun violence. This suggests that awareness and action, however small, might emerge from tragedy. Benjamin's discovery of his family history provides another form of hope—the possibility of understanding and honoring those who came before.
Literary Technique and Style
Prose and Pacing
Berman's prose is clean and accessible without sacrificing literary quality. She employs a different voice for each character while maintaining consistency across the collection. The pacing varies effectively—some stories build slowly to their tragic conclusions, while others thrust readers immediately into crisis situations.
The author's background in editing and publishing shows in the collection's tight construction. No word feels wasted, and each story contributes to the larger emotional arc of the book. The transitions between stories are particularly well-handled, with each alphabetical progression feeling natural rather than forced.
Structure as Meaning
The alphabetical organization creates a unique reading experience that enhances the collection's themes. Reading from A to Z creates a sense of systematic documentation, as if we're working through a comprehensive record of loss. Yet this systematic approach contrasts powerfully with the randomness and senselessness of the violence depicted.
The brief biographical statements that open each story ("I am Anna and I am a statistic...") serve as both memorial inscriptions and stark reminders of lives reduced to data points. This formatting choice reinforces the collection's central tension between individual humanity and statistical abstraction.
Emotional Impact and Reader Experience
Cumulative Effect
While individual stories are powerful, the collection's true impact emerges through accumulation. Reading twenty-six stories of gun violence creates an overwhelming emotional experience that mirrors the societal weight of this ongoing tragedy. By the final story, readers carry the emotional burden of all these fictional deaths, creating an understanding of loss that statistics alone cannot convey.
Accessibility Without Simplification
Berman manages to address an incredibly complex social issue without oversimplifying the political dimensions or resorting to easy answers. The stories focus on human experience rather than policy debates, making the collection accessible to readers across the political spectrum while still delivering a clear message about the need for change.
Historical and Contemporary Context
Literary Precedents
"Shot" joins a tradition of short story collections that address social issues through interconnected narratives, following in the footsteps of works like Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" and more recently, books like "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. However, Berman's alphabetical structure and focus on gun violence make this collection uniquely contemporary and formally innovative.
Timeliness and Relevance
Published in 2025, "Shot" arrives at a moment when gun violence continues to dominate American headlines and policy discussions. The collection's focus on everyday victims rather than mass shooting events reflects the broader scope of gun violence in America, including the daily toll that receives less media attention.
Final Assessment
"Shot - A Dictionary of the Lost" succeeds both as a work of literary art and as a piece of social commentary. Berman has created something rare: a book that tackles one of America's most pressing issues without sacrificing narrative sophistication or emotional complexity. The alphabetical structure elevates what could have been a simple message-driven collection into something more architecturally ambitious and emotionally devastating.
This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how literature can address contemporary social crises. It's also a powerful example of how formal innovation can enhance rather than distract from a work's emotional and political impact. While the subject matter is undeniably heavy, the quality of the writing and the importance of the message make this a collection that demands attention.
Berman has given voice to the voiceless and created a memorial in prose that honors both individual lives and collective loss. In an era where gun violence has become numbingly routine, "Shot" restores the human dimension to tragedy and reminds us that behind every statistic is a person whose life mattered. This is fiction at its most socially engaged and formally inventive—a collection that will likely influence how writers approach difficult contemporary subjects for years to come.
August 11, 2025
Despite the fact that SHOT is a work of fiction, Jude Berman does a wonderful job at humanizing the 26 stories of gun violence victims. Too often, the latest real-life gun violence incident is just a short blurb on the evening news. But in this shocking book, Jude does a great job at taking her time to introduce the characters and the normal lives they lead. Through Berman’s eyes, we learn who they are, where they come from, who they love, how they die. She challenges us to use our voice to stop the madness. Because the next statistic due to gun violence could very well be any one of us. A must read for the times we’re living.
November 20, 2024
SHOT is a captivating read with a poignant message.about the U.S. gun problem. Using fictional characters, Jude Berman does a brilliant job at putting faces and voices to the victims of gun violence. Anyone who cares about humanity and the thousands of firearm deaths annually, will want to read this book.
December 9, 2025
Give this Book Away
You know you’re reading a good book when you’re only a few pages in and already you’re thinking about who you should recommend it to. And, maybe, who you should give your own copy to.
Frankly, Shot is not the kind of book I usually read. If I’m not struggling to keep up with books in my own fields (tourism development, Himalayas, pashmina, for example), there are other areas of reality in desperate need of remedial attention – Newtonian physics, CRISPR technology, macroeconomics, to name a few. I can’t afford the luxury of fiction.
Particularly when it comes to social commentary, it seems counterintuitive to choose imagination over documentation. But in this case I was wrong.
Jude Berman’s task is to give you an appreciation of the loss of real lives, of people who wanted to live, who should have had a chance to continue being and loving, whom you must care about even if you never met them. And she wanted you to feel the weight of numbers without resorting to statistics.
If you think about it, fiction (like poetry) is capable of conveying universal truth precisely because it is not burdened with particular truth. A character can emerge from the page swiftly and clearly, without the ambiguity and uncertainty that are inevitable features of biography, history, and documentary. That means the reader is free to engage with the character without distraction.
In Berman's handling, the result is the farthest thing from a Gumpian “box of chocolates,” where you may not know which filling you're going to encounter next, but you pretty much know the range of options at the outset. In Shot, the characters speak for themselves, recounting the inner lives and circumstances that lead – inevitably or by crazy happenstance or both – to a foregone conclusion (foregone, given the nature of the collection). And because of the author's breadth of interests and experiences, these are all characters you want to know, lives you want to see play out. Each loss is ours.
Unlike the authors of medieval bestiaries, Berman was free to name each character as she would. She set the artistic and philosophical agenda by front-loading characters whose inner lives stake out the intellectual and emotional dimensions of human existence. Through orthographic choice, Berman juxtaposes stories that resonate with each other and define a trajectory for the collection as a whole. And that is where the author’s own point becomes palpable, despite the choice of entrusting the entire opus to a bunch of random voices who have nothing to say about gun violence.
In fact, Berman’s message should be central to Second Amendment polemics. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot, we have allowed ourselves to become numb to gun violence. Every mass shooting is reduced to a scorecard of casualties, and we simply don’t have the attention span to focus on the lives that are maimed or destroyed. Shootings become spectacles, like the blood sports of the Romans, instead of aberrant symptoms of the worst kind of social disease.
Berman herself never addresses our disordered set of values and priorities, but she sets the table. It may be hard to see how policy makers will be influenced by this book, but if change does come it will be because we reached a tipping point. And Berman’s book will have played a part.
--
May 31, 2025
Jude Berman’s enthralling new book of nonfiction, "Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost," offers 26 stories, named in alphabetical order for a shooting victim—Anna, Benjamin, Chester, Dixie, and so on. Berman writes that her aim is “to give voice to those who did not survive,” and in first person narrative, Berman delivers. Each chapter is diverse in age of the victim, and location, such as Omaha Nebraska, Dorchester, Massachusetts, or Redmond Oregon, but with one commonality—each life ended abruptly, violently.
The book features young students, child care givers, a clinical neurosurgeon, a small-town mayor, a storytelling 4-year old, victims of hate crimes, a woman riding a bus, a couple in an ER room, kids looking for a friend, an older Jew returning to synagogue, a pregnant mom accidentally shot by her young son with her husband’s gun. In another story, two young people prepare for and enjoy a Hindu-Jewish fusion wedding. The reader is absorbed in the meticulous detail, before gunshots ring out. The stories are easy to read, but the approaching horror in each is clear.
Imaginative for their realism, haunting for their sheer ordinariness, it’s impossible to miss the foreshadowing in the stories, each of which begins with a bio, as here:
"I am Anna and I am a statistic. I was twelve years old when I was shot. I lived with my family in a yellow house in Omaha, Nebraska. I was a straight-A student and wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. My pronouns were she/her. I am survived by my parents, two younger sisters, and our bulldog, Axel."
The stories then describe relatively normal lives, as with Sage: "Every day I take the bus to the department store where I work . . . In the evening, I make the same commute in reverse, to our home in Paradise, south of the airport. Been doing it for two decades." Sage’s account, and many others, are relatable—Sage takes the bus twice a day, observes people, guesses what their lives are like, their likes and dislikes, their secrets.
Berman renders each with vivid imagery, for example: "My eye is drawn to his steel-toe cowboy boot, sticking almost midway into the aisle. Its heel is on the floor, the toe pointed up, almost as if this man is trying to trip somebody. If boots had lungs, his would be screaming." It’s what, in part, makes the difficult but critically important subject a smooth read. Berman makes the characters personal, lifelike, sympathetic, and innocent—something we all need to read right now.
The book features young students, child care givers, a clinical neurosurgeon, a small-town mayor, a storytelling 4-year old, victims of hate crimes, a woman riding a bus, a couple in an ER room, kids looking for a friend, an older Jew returning to synagogue, a pregnant mom accidentally shot by her young son with her husband’s gun. In another story, two young people prepare for and enjoy a Hindu-Jewish fusion wedding. The reader is absorbed in the meticulous detail, before gunshots ring out. The stories are easy to read, but the approaching horror in each is clear.
Imaginative for their realism, haunting for their sheer ordinariness, it’s impossible to miss the foreshadowing in the stories, each of which begins with a bio, as here:
"I am Anna and I am a statistic. I was twelve years old when I was shot. I lived with my family in a yellow house in Omaha, Nebraska. I was a straight-A student and wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. My pronouns were she/her. I am survived by my parents, two younger sisters, and our bulldog, Axel."
The stories then describe relatively normal lives, as with Sage: "Every day I take the bus to the department store where I work . . . In the evening, I make the same commute in reverse, to our home in Paradise, south of the airport. Been doing it for two decades." Sage’s account, and many others, are relatable—Sage takes the bus twice a day, observes people, guesses what their lives are like, their likes and dislikes, their secrets.
Berman renders each with vivid imagery, for example: "My eye is drawn to his steel-toe cowboy boot, sticking almost midway into the aisle. Its heel is on the floor, the toe pointed up, almost as if this man is trying to trip somebody. If boots had lungs, his would be screaming." It’s what, in part, makes the difficult but critically important subject a smooth read. Berman makes the characters personal, lifelike, sympathetic, and innocent—something we all need to read right now.
July 23, 2025
One doesn’t have to look far to see the reverberating effects of guns. Whether another mass casualty event or the shooter drills conducted by elementary students, the sad reality is all around us. Author Jude Berman uses realistic fictional shooter events to give voice to those who didn’t survive.
Twenty-Six chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, are named for an individual, nearly all of which don't survive. Beginning with A, for Anna, hers is a story we’ve become all too familiar with, a school shooting. Yet “Shot” doesn’t just take readers through the final events playing out across the gymnasium floor but rather gives us a sense of who Anna was, her relationship with her mother, and her final moments before she succumbed to gun violence. Despite being fiction, out of respect to those lost, each of these stories is entirely too real. Berman gives readers a sense of familiarity with each chapter’s victim, whether innocent, pushed too far, or a gun fanatic themselves, each story is immersive, powerful, and impactful.
Easily a top read for the year, “Shot” takes on gun violence head on. Through the use of words, stories, and realities, Berman takes to the pen to spread awareness and share the disgusting realities of gun control. No story has a happy ending, no one has the luxury of dying from natural causes, as each letter of the alphabet digs in further.
So real, so emotional, and so utterly devastating. The power of these stories, the words and feelings behind the pages, leaves readers emotionally charged yet fraught and heartbroken all over again. We’ve become so numb to it all as a society, and yet Berman puts each of us right into the moment as if experiencing it for ourselves, firsthand.
There’s never a why, because there’s no rational answer as to why anyone would ever kill another human. This isn’t a book to show why shooters do what they do, but rather a humanizing perspective of those caught in the crossfire. From a school to a place of worship, Berman places a mirror in front of us as she forces us to watch. Drawing you into the world, interests, and life our character possesses before abruptly ending them in various ways. No one is safe, whether you’re shopping for a dress with your mom or a gun fanatic yourself, no one is immune to the loose gun control running rampant across this country.
There are rare moments when you’re in the midst of reading a book and you just know it is going to have a profoundly powerful impact, that’s what I felt with this one. I can’t imagine the painful research, and perspectives harvested to write these stories. My heart breaks, my soul cries, and my fury ignites for regulations and bans as the activist within burns bright.
Twenty-Six chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet, are named for an individual, nearly all of which don't survive. Beginning with A, for Anna, hers is a story we’ve become all too familiar with, a school shooting. Yet “Shot” doesn’t just take readers through the final events playing out across the gymnasium floor but rather gives us a sense of who Anna was, her relationship with her mother, and her final moments before she succumbed to gun violence. Despite being fiction, out of respect to those lost, each of these stories is entirely too real. Berman gives readers a sense of familiarity with each chapter’s victim, whether innocent, pushed too far, or a gun fanatic themselves, each story is immersive, powerful, and impactful.
Easily a top read for the year, “Shot” takes on gun violence head on. Through the use of words, stories, and realities, Berman takes to the pen to spread awareness and share the disgusting realities of gun control. No story has a happy ending, no one has the luxury of dying from natural causes, as each letter of the alphabet digs in further.
So real, so emotional, and so utterly devastating. The power of these stories, the words and feelings behind the pages, leaves readers emotionally charged yet fraught and heartbroken all over again. We’ve become so numb to it all as a society, and yet Berman puts each of us right into the moment as if experiencing it for ourselves, firsthand.
There’s never a why, because there’s no rational answer as to why anyone would ever kill another human. This isn’t a book to show why shooters do what they do, but rather a humanizing perspective of those caught in the crossfire. From a school to a place of worship, Berman places a mirror in front of us as she forces us to watch. Drawing you into the world, interests, and life our character possesses before abruptly ending them in various ways. No one is safe, whether you’re shopping for a dress with your mom or a gun fanatic yourself, no one is immune to the loose gun control running rampant across this country.
There are rare moments when you’re in the midst of reading a book and you just know it is going to have a profoundly powerful impact, that’s what I felt with this one. I can’t imagine the painful research, and perspectives harvested to write these stories. My heart breaks, my soul cries, and my fury ignites for regulations and bans as the activist within burns bright.
September 19, 2025
In the brilliant TV series Six Feet Under, the opening pre-credit sequence habitually began with someone’s death. Similarly in Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost, all 26 short stories begin with the testimony of someone who’s going to be shot dead. Their diverse first-person stories cover virtually every demographic, socially and psychologically: young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural etc – an amazing feat of empathy by the author. Berman writes in simple, effective prose, which is much harder to do than it sounds, especially when adopting so many voices. And she’s adept at withering ironies, most notably in the story of Kylor, who discovers to his cost that gun shows are not ‘the safest place on earth’.
Anyone who approves of America’s liberal gun laws should read this sad litany of violence. It’s a searing indictment made all the more poignant and powerful by vividly drawn characters who will linger long in the memory. Highly recommended.
Anyone who approves of America’s liberal gun laws should read this sad litany of violence. It’s a searing indictment made all the more poignant and powerful by vividly drawn characters who will linger long in the memory. Highly recommended.
May 11, 2025
This book is not only sociopolitically important, but also deeply moving. Nearly every chapter details the lives and then the senseless deaths of people in the US killed by guns. With the italicized quote at the beginning of the chapter and the horrific end the reader knows is coming, Jude Berman moves us with the specific stories of each "statistic." In this way, she shows the unfathomable breadth of human tragedy caused by gun violence while making readers feel the depth of each individual loss.
The characters--young and old, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents, different careers, stages of life, ages, and belief systems--are all brought together by the manner of their deaths.
Poignant and engaging, Shot is a great choice for thoughtful reading on one's own as well as book club discussions.
The characters--young and old, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents, different careers, stages of life, ages, and belief systems--are all brought together by the manner of their deaths.
Poignant and engaging, Shot is a great choice for thoughtful reading on one's own as well as book club discussions.
August 5, 2025
In Shot, Berman transforms statistics into souls, weaving together the truncated stories of dreams deferred and futures stolen by America's gun violence epidemic. This haunting dictionary of the departed doesn't merely document lives lost—it resurrects them on the page, forcing readers to confront the profound human cost behind every headline. Through intimate portraits of individuals whose stories ended mid-sentence, Berman creates a visceral reckoning that makes the abstract devastatingly personal, turning each alphabetized entry into an irreplaceable life that demanded to be lived fully. This isn't just a well-written book; it's a literary memorial that refuses to let victims become mere numbers, compelling us to feel the weight of each severed connection, each unfulfilled promise, each love story cut tragically short.
January 2, 2026
A new perspective on an old and vexing American issue.
I had to read this book in stages. Like Just Mercy or The New Jim Crow, the stories are gut-wrenching. And because they are individual stories, they can be read one or two at a time, with thoughtful pauses between to let the stories sink in before you are drawn back to read the next one.
By writing in first person and presenting the stories as fiction, Berman puts the reader into the consciousness of twenty-six shooting victims, one at a time. This viewpoint is, of course, impossible in real life, where we can only hear from everyone around the victim. Using this technique, Berman brings it all home in a raw and gripping way.
Kudos too on the striking cover, which gives the title SHOT a double meaning, and on the prescient subtitle, A Dictionary of the Lost.
I had to read this book in stages. Like Just Mercy or The New Jim Crow, the stories are gut-wrenching. And because they are individual stories, they can be read one or two at a time, with thoughtful pauses between to let the stories sink in before you are drawn back to read the next one.
By writing in first person and presenting the stories as fiction, Berman puts the reader into the consciousness of twenty-six shooting victims, one at a time. This viewpoint is, of course, impossible in real life, where we can only hear from everyone around the victim. Using this technique, Berman brings it all home in a raw and gripping way.
Kudos too on the striking cover, which gives the title SHOT a double meaning, and on the prescient subtitle, A Dictionary of the Lost.
December 1, 2025
Why read a novel about gun violence when real life already feels heavy? Because Shot brings us closer - not to the brutality, but to the people. These stories cut through the numbness we’ve built to survive the news cycle and rehumanize what we’ve come to accept as normal.
After my nephew experienced a shooting firsthand, I realized how easy it is to look away… until it hits home. This book keeps us from looking away. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, and it just might spark the conversations we urgently need.
After my nephew experienced a shooting firsthand, I realized how easy it is to look away… until it hits home. This book keeps us from looking away. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, and it just might spark the conversations we urgently need.
August 20, 2025
"Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost" is an amazing book, in its writing, format, and subject matter. The characters came alive through the author's talented pen, and their stories pierced my soul. Without focusing on my stance of being pro or con gun control, I must say every person would benefit from reading this book. It is a brilliant approach to spotlighting the highly explosive topic, and it stays with the reader far beyond the last page. Highly recommend.
December 18, 2025
In this short story collection, Berman centers fully-realized characters living ordinary lives splintered by gun violence, from a twelve-year-old science student to an elderly man rediscovering his heritage. Their stories devastate the reader because we know how they'll end. Most haunting? Berman captures the way gun violence is normalized in America. You'll recognize people you know, maybe even yourself, in these characters. It is a deeply meaningful read.
November 5, 2024
Jude Berman presents well-crafted stories of individuals of various ages, occupations, and locations whose lives are abruptly impacted by gun violence. Shot captivates the reader with the details of each life and leaves us wishing the outcome had been different and knowing, in a different political climate, it could be.
October 3, 2025
Jude Berman's goal is clear: to tell the fictional stories of 26 characters, one for each letter of the alphabet, who have been shot to death. How she accomplishes this is brilliant: so many different voices, and each one telling a powerful, yet straightforward, story. As Berman writes in her Foreword, this is all of us. A strong plea for each one of us to work toward an end to gun violence.
August 17, 2025
Powerful.
Jude Berman’s stories of characters impacted by gun violence are searing and intense. If it’s easy (and sad) that we become immune to the sheer number of gun violence victims, then Berman reminds of not just the victims’ humanity, but of our own, too.
Jude Berman’s stories of characters impacted by gun violence are searing and intense. If it’s easy (and sad) that we become immune to the sheer number of gun violence victims, then Berman reminds of not just the victims’ humanity, but of our own, too.
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