What do you think?
Rate this book
Suspect
Suspect is more than just a personal recollection— It is an examination of how people perceive mass shootings and the contagion effect. It is focused on when the author was suspected of wanting to shoot up her Vermont high school in the immediate aftermath of Columbine. She was not wholly innocent in the sense that she was an accomplice to a death threat. But mostly, the homicidal rumors about her spun from being creative. She was the only one dressing goth, and she had written a weird, rhyming story about sixth graders dying at a dance by a disco ball and other non-firearm weapons. Seamlessly blending memoir with investigative journalism, Suspect is a story of survival and social justice in black eyeliner.
“A thoughtful and fascinating portrait of bygone small town teenage life—specifically the era just before school shootings transformed from unthinkable tragedy to accepted banality. Through memories of bullying and navigating esoteric high school social structures, Tron details the psychological impact of the Columbine shooting on teens across the nation, capturing and investigating the strange mixture of revulsion and kinship many experienced in its aftermath”. — B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space and Burn You the Fuck Alive.
“Suspect is an unflinching, sharp-edged, and smart as hell story of post-Columbine America. It walks the line between journalism and memoir, giving readers deeply personal insight into a teen’s life in a rural New England town, while interstitially providing factual and sourced information to give context. A unique and powerful book.” — Ann Dávila Cardinal, award-winning author of We Need No Wings
“Suspect is a total immersion into the angst, violence, and hysteria that captured the zeitgeist of the ’90s. Like the Neo-version of Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ Tron looks back at a troubled time in America with curiosity, when once she inadvertently became a town’s pariah. Rich in shock rock, spiked collars, and Mountain Dew, Tron’s memoir is a rich piece of the past we can’t stop revisiting and dare not ignore”— Jax Miller, author of Freedom’s Child and Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls
“Gripping, incisive, and tender—I couldn’t put this book down. A masterful display of heart, wit, courage and grace.”—Chrystin Ondersma, author of Dignity Not Debt
"Gina Tron brings the detailed, clear-sighted wisdom of an expert journalist to her intensely personal new memoir, in which she explores the psyche of a well-meaning and overwhelmed teenager who’s been accused of plotting to harm her classmates with a lens that feels universal. We are all SUSPECT." — Meghan Joyce Tozer, M.M. Ph.D.,” author of Night, Forgotten, and UnSlut: A Diary and a Memoir
"Teens only have two powers: the power to imagine, and the power to bully. Gina Tron wielded the first and faced the brunt of the second during the Columbine era. This harrowing memoir is a must-read for anyone who never fit, or who has ever been afraid and enraged."— Nick Mamatas, author of The Second Shooter.
“When I was a teenaged girl, I experienced the most intense few years of vile jealousy, hatred, and out-of-control scenarios that movies like Heathers and The Craft could barely scratch the surface on. To say that Tron evokes a brutally honest rendition of her own teenage years similar to these, where her struggles between herself and her mother, false friendships, and identity hunts, would be the ultimate understatement. Suspect is the story of a girl caught between adulthood—where the unsettling aspects of high school hell cut through all judgements. An emotionally jagged observation from both present, past, and future, Tron recounts and recognizes how adults fail us, friendships are twisted, and in the end, it’s our connections in the least likely of places that hold us together” —Hillary Leftwich, author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock and Aura
“Brutal in the story it tells, but empathetic and gracious in its delivery, Suspect is now one of my favorite books, and we're lucky it exists.”—Jay Halsey, author of Barely Half in an Awkward Line
“Gina Tron’s Suspect is a compelling and evocative exploration of the harsh realities of female adolescence, particularly for those of us who grew up feeling “othered” by our peers. True, not every unpopular teenage girl is accused of being a prospective school shooter or domestic terrorist–but the unwarranted scrutiny, suspicion, and ostracization that come with such an accusation are all-too-similar to the hell inflicted upon any teenage girl deemed a social outcast. In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Tron delves into her own unique and painful experiences to illustrate the universal struggle of young women navigating a world in which they are undervalued, unprotected, and denied the benefit of the doubt.”—Annie Singer, author and editor at Ladygunn
“A thoughtful and fascinating portrait of bygone small town teenage life—specifically the era just before school shootings transformed from unthinkable tragedy to accepted banality. Through memories of bullying and navigating esoteric high school social structures, Tron details the psychological impact of the Columbine shooting on teens across the nation, capturing and investigating the strange mixture of revulsion and kinship many experienced in its aftermath”. — B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space and Burn You the Fuck Alive.
“Suspect is an unflinching, sharp-edged, and smart as hell story of post-Columbine America. It walks the line between journalism and memoir, giving readers deeply personal insight into a teen’s life in a rural New England town, while interstitially providing factual and sourced information to give context. A unique and powerful book.” — Ann Dávila Cardinal, award-winning author of We Need No Wings
“Suspect is a total immersion into the angst, violence, and hysteria that captured the zeitgeist of the ’90s. Like the Neo-version of Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ Tron looks back at a troubled time in America with curiosity, when once she inadvertently became a town’s pariah. Rich in shock rock, spiked collars, and Mountain Dew, Tron’s memoir is a rich piece of the past we can’t stop revisiting and dare not ignore”— Jax Miller, author of Freedom’s Child and Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls
“Gripping, incisive, and tender—I couldn’t put this book down. A masterful display of heart, wit, courage and grace.”—Chrystin Ondersma, author of Dignity Not Debt
"Gina Tron brings the detailed, clear-sighted wisdom of an expert journalist to her intensely personal new memoir, in which she explores the psyche of a well-meaning and overwhelmed teenager who’s been accused of plotting to harm her classmates with a lens that feels universal. We are all SUSPECT." — Meghan Joyce Tozer, M.M. Ph.D.,” author of Night, Forgotten, and UnSlut: A Diary and a Memoir
"Teens only have two powers: the power to imagine, and the power to bully. Gina Tron wielded the first and faced the brunt of the second during the Columbine era. This harrowing memoir is a must-read for anyone who never fit, or who has ever been afraid and enraged."— Nick Mamatas, author of The Second Shooter.
“When I was a teenaged girl, I experienced the most intense few years of vile jealousy, hatred, and out-of-control scenarios that movies like Heathers and The Craft could barely scratch the surface on. To say that Tron evokes a brutally honest rendition of her own teenage years similar to these, where her struggles between herself and her mother, false friendships, and identity hunts, would be the ultimate understatement. Suspect is the story of a girl caught between adulthood—where the unsettling aspects of high school hell cut through all judgements. An emotionally jagged observation from both present, past, and future, Tron recounts and recognizes how adults fail us, friendships are twisted, and in the end, it’s our connections in the least likely of places that hold us together” —Hillary Leftwich, author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock and Aura
“Brutal in the story it tells, but empathetic and gracious in its delivery, Suspect is now one of my favorite books, and we're lucky it exists.”—Jay Halsey, author of Barely Half in an Awkward Line
“Gina Tron’s Suspect is a compelling and evocative exploration of the harsh realities of female adolescence, particularly for those of us who grew up feeling “othered” by our peers. True, not every unpopular teenage girl is accused of being a prospective school shooter or domestic terrorist–but the unwarranted scrutiny, suspicion, and ostracization that come with such an accusation are all-too-similar to the hell inflicted upon any teenage girl deemed a social outcast. In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Tron delves into her own unique and painful experiences to illustrate the universal struggle of young women navigating a world in which they are undervalued, unprotected, and denied the benefit of the doubt.”—Annie Singer, author and editor at Ladygunn
- GenresMemoir
214 pages, Paperback
Published December 5, 2024
1919 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 26, 2025
Very impressive how Gina Tron spills the beans of her High School experience, getting wrapped up in the post Columbine PANIC ("OMG EVERY TEENAGER DRESSING DIFFERENTLY FROM THE NORM IS GONNA SHOOT UP A SCHOOL TOMORROW OMG") and she does a fab job in providing nuance here.
Take away? School admins, teachers, parents, THE MEDIA: they should do some NUANCE training with Frau Tron because - spoiler alert - a normative society that forces adolescents to adhere to very narrow standards of what is acceptable in terms of dress/behavior, pushes them into boxes coupled with ignoring the inherent cruelty of teens (the phenomenon of bullying was not dealt with productively when I went to school in Germany in the 80s and neither are there concepts that address the core issues now when my son just graduated - he had 2 abysmal experiences: one in California, one in Bavaria).
Anyways, for someone who also can NOT understand how ANY of my peers utter bullcrap like "High School was the GREATEST TIME of my LIFE" this book was a wonderful experience.
And Gina also does not hide or sugarcoat the appeal of the Columbine shooters at the time.
Of course Gina's mom who ALLOWED HER TO WATCH THE MOVIE "CARRIE" at a VERY YOUNG AGE = she needs a stern finger wagging too but since Gina made it out ok into a successful writing career with no murdering anyone (as far as I know) I guess we good?
Take away? School admins, teachers, parents, THE MEDIA: they should do some NUANCE training with Frau Tron because - spoiler alert - a normative society that forces adolescents to adhere to very narrow standards of what is acceptable in terms of dress/behavior, pushes them into boxes coupled with ignoring the inherent cruelty of teens (the phenomenon of bullying was not dealt with productively when I went to school in Germany in the 80s and neither are there concepts that address the core issues now when my son just graduated - he had 2 abysmal experiences: one in California, one in Bavaria).
Anyways, for someone who also can NOT understand how ANY of my peers utter bullcrap like "High School was the GREATEST TIME of my LIFE" this book was a wonderful experience.
And Gina also does not hide or sugarcoat the appeal of the Columbine shooters at the time.
Of course Gina's mom who ALLOWED HER TO WATCH THE MOVIE "CARRIE" at a VERY YOUNG AGE = she needs a stern finger wagging too but since Gina made it out ok into a successful writing career with no murdering anyone (as far as I know) I guess we good?
December 8, 2024
I couldn't stop reading once I started. It perfectly encapsulates the experience of what it was like to be a high school outsider in a post-Columbine world. Gina Tron has been on a hot streak with books for the past few years and this book continues that streak. Check this out when you can and look into her bibliography after!
December 29, 2024
Please indulge me before I get into my review of Gina Tron’s insightful and poignant memoir with a lengthy anecdote. Feel free to skip over the next paragraph if you want to get to my attempts at analysis. The following paragraph is a mix of self-therapy and also connecting to Tron’s own adolescent experiences, though mine were quite different except in a few ways.
My eye was first drawn to this book based on the premise that its writer was accused of being a potential school shooter at a young age. That was an intriguing idea on its own since it’s a perspective rarely seen, but I was especially drawn to it because I went through a significantly less intense and dramatic false accusation of being considered a potential threat in middle school years later. I was a silly creative nerd nowhere near the upper echelons of popularity and I liked to entertain myself and my fellow weirdos by drawing comics. Sometimes there’d be explosions and violence, but it was pretty cartoony and nothing worse than you’d see in shows like South Park and Family Guy (which I watched both of religiously). As a chunky dork, I was frequently picked on by a handful of bullies. It wasn’t anything severe, but their actions undeniably had an impact on my worldview and self-esteem. My method of coping with this was to put my tormentors in my comics as caricatures of themselves occasionally meeting nasty ends. One got eaten by a pterodactyl, another got sucked through a jet engine, one more was sent to prehistoric times and clubbed to death by Neanderthals. Nothing too realistic or alarming, they were usually dispatched by their own hubris like Indiana Jones villains. Still, there was blood, so I wasn’t going to share these stories with any adults. I was at least smart enough to know they wouldn’t approve. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to keep it from the attention of one of my bullies that took the bus home with me. He saw his cartoon self as a square-headed doofus falling off a bridge into quicksand. I expected to receive a grievous injury for my sin, but he silently handed my notebook back to me and that seemed to be that. A few days later, I was called into the principal’s office with all the prerequisite “ooohs” from my classmates. The principal (who had the same last name as a Simpsons character) informed me that he heard disturbing rumors that I was making violent drawings of real people getting hurt. He then grilled 13/14-year-old me on if my parents owned guns and if I was planning anything. There were plenty more questions from there that escaped me. Having done nothing more aggressive than slapping someone, these accusations shook me to my core. Even at my lowest moments, I never wanted to hurt anyone. At worst, I just hoped these bullies would disappear. The principal had me hand over one of the notebooks from my backpack and he flipped through it in disgust. He gave it back, but made me promise never to bring that “trash” back into his school. I lied and said it wouldn’t happen again. He had me visit the guidance counselor who confirmed I was no threat. Unlike Tron, I suffered no real consequences after this. The bullies gradually backed off over time as I got more confident. I continued to draw for myself and my friends up through college. That meeting with the principal was probably where my anti-authoritarian beliefs were planted. A funny epilogue: A year following my run-in with “the law”, I was almost caught again by someone I turned into a comic book villain. My shop teacher was a blowhard and a macho jerk, so I turned him into a mad scientist with an army of balsa wood robots under his command. During class, he saw me doodling and said he’d like to check out what I was doing. Terrified, I hesitantly handed it over. Thankfully, he only feigned interest and quickly scanned it before handing it back and saying “Cool.” Definitely dodged a bullet there. A character inspired by him will very likely make an appearance in a future story of mine. Anyways, sorry, that’s my long-ass anecdote. Now to the actual review!
The writing of Suspect walks a tricky tightrope stylistically. Tron expertly blends journalistic writing with an intimate almost diary-like approach in this. That second part is appropriate, since she includes actual diary entries from when she was going through her adolescent trials. I definitely have to give her props for shining such a bright light on this vulnerable time in her life. There’s very little she seems to hide from the reader, though I certainly wouldn’t blame her if she left things out. I get embarrassed just thinking about my middle school years (like how a friend of mine once asked a girl I crushed on to give me a hug and I paid him ten bucks for the service). Tron writing about her youthful naïveté believing her life ought to play out like a John Hughes movie or other optimistic pop culture definitely hit close to home. Even when she pulled some ill-advised teenage pranks that got her in enough hot water to impact the rest of her high school career, it was easy to empathize. As social pariahs go, she was nowhere near the worst I’ve come across. It was a volatile time in American culture and I understand why the school (adults included) went on to ostracize her, but that didn’t make it right or acceptable. In my opinion, Americans have a habit of making their own worst enemies. Tron’s toxic school environment felt like a microcosm of that theory of mine.
Alongside the faithful retelling of these tumultuous teenage years, Tron’s hindsight and research into the largely American phenomenon of school shootings adds some essential insight to the memoir. Hearing the points she makes from the perspective of someone that was on the inside looking out of social strife as opposed to some detached academic certainly adds validity to her theses. Her present day interjections don’t distract from this captivating story she presents to us, but they do pepper in some flavor.
Just as I was about to finish the book, Tron hit me with a surprise ending! I feel like it’s hard to pull of one of those in nonfiction, so that deserves applause along with the rest of the book. This may be because film is so baked into my brain, but I could see this as a movie or miniseries! It’s really compelling stuff! Even though these were real people, the way Tron wrote each one made them jump off the page like characters. Stranger than fiction, to be sure! Since I had such a memorable time reading through this at a quick pace, I will have to keep an eye on Tron’s future projects!
As usual, my review is a mess and proves I’m more of a storyteller than an analytical mind, but oh well. Even though I’m aware of that shortcoming, I will keep at it. This boy don’t know how to quit! Hope my stream-of-consciousness ramblings were at least entertaining if not cogent!
My eye was first drawn to this book based on the premise that its writer was accused of being a potential school shooter at a young age. That was an intriguing idea on its own since it’s a perspective rarely seen, but I was especially drawn to it because I went through a significantly less intense and dramatic false accusation of being considered a potential threat in middle school years later. I was a silly creative nerd nowhere near the upper echelons of popularity and I liked to entertain myself and my fellow weirdos by drawing comics. Sometimes there’d be explosions and violence, but it was pretty cartoony and nothing worse than you’d see in shows like South Park and Family Guy (which I watched both of religiously). As a chunky dork, I was frequently picked on by a handful of bullies. It wasn’t anything severe, but their actions undeniably had an impact on my worldview and self-esteem. My method of coping with this was to put my tormentors in my comics as caricatures of themselves occasionally meeting nasty ends. One got eaten by a pterodactyl, another got sucked through a jet engine, one more was sent to prehistoric times and clubbed to death by Neanderthals. Nothing too realistic or alarming, they were usually dispatched by their own hubris like Indiana Jones villains. Still, there was blood, so I wasn’t going to share these stories with any adults. I was at least smart enough to know they wouldn’t approve. Unfortunately, I was not smart enough to keep it from the attention of one of my bullies that took the bus home with me. He saw his cartoon self as a square-headed doofus falling off a bridge into quicksand. I expected to receive a grievous injury for my sin, but he silently handed my notebook back to me and that seemed to be that. A few days later, I was called into the principal’s office with all the prerequisite “ooohs” from my classmates. The principal (who had the same last name as a Simpsons character) informed me that he heard disturbing rumors that I was making violent drawings of real people getting hurt. He then grilled 13/14-year-old me on if my parents owned guns and if I was planning anything. There were plenty more questions from there that escaped me. Having done nothing more aggressive than slapping someone, these accusations shook me to my core. Even at my lowest moments, I never wanted to hurt anyone. At worst, I just hoped these bullies would disappear. The principal had me hand over one of the notebooks from my backpack and he flipped through it in disgust. He gave it back, but made me promise never to bring that “trash” back into his school. I lied and said it wouldn’t happen again. He had me visit the guidance counselor who confirmed I was no threat. Unlike Tron, I suffered no real consequences after this. The bullies gradually backed off over time as I got more confident. I continued to draw for myself and my friends up through college. That meeting with the principal was probably where my anti-authoritarian beliefs were planted. A funny epilogue: A year following my run-in with “the law”, I was almost caught again by someone I turned into a comic book villain. My shop teacher was a blowhard and a macho jerk, so I turned him into a mad scientist with an army of balsa wood robots under his command. During class, he saw me doodling and said he’d like to check out what I was doing. Terrified, I hesitantly handed it over. Thankfully, he only feigned interest and quickly scanned it before handing it back and saying “Cool.” Definitely dodged a bullet there. A character inspired by him will very likely make an appearance in a future story of mine. Anyways, sorry, that’s my long-ass anecdote. Now to the actual review!
The writing of Suspect walks a tricky tightrope stylistically. Tron expertly blends journalistic writing with an intimate almost diary-like approach in this. That second part is appropriate, since she includes actual diary entries from when she was going through her adolescent trials. I definitely have to give her props for shining such a bright light on this vulnerable time in her life. There’s very little she seems to hide from the reader, though I certainly wouldn’t blame her if she left things out. I get embarrassed just thinking about my middle school years (like how a friend of mine once asked a girl I crushed on to give me a hug and I paid him ten bucks for the service). Tron writing about her youthful naïveté believing her life ought to play out like a John Hughes movie or other optimistic pop culture definitely hit close to home. Even when she pulled some ill-advised teenage pranks that got her in enough hot water to impact the rest of her high school career, it was easy to empathize. As social pariahs go, she was nowhere near the worst I’ve come across. It was a volatile time in American culture and I understand why the school (adults included) went on to ostracize her, but that didn’t make it right or acceptable. In my opinion, Americans have a habit of making their own worst enemies. Tron’s toxic school environment felt like a microcosm of that theory of mine.
Alongside the faithful retelling of these tumultuous teenage years, Tron’s hindsight and research into the largely American phenomenon of school shootings adds some essential insight to the memoir. Hearing the points she makes from the perspective of someone that was on the inside looking out of social strife as opposed to some detached academic certainly adds validity to her theses. Her present day interjections don’t distract from this captivating story she presents to us, but they do pepper in some flavor.
Just as I was about to finish the book, Tron hit me with a surprise ending! I feel like it’s hard to pull of one of those in nonfiction, so that deserves applause along with the rest of the book. This may be because film is so baked into my brain, but I could see this as a movie or miniseries! It’s really compelling stuff! Even though these were real people, the way Tron wrote each one made them jump off the page like characters. Stranger than fiction, to be sure! Since I had such a memorable time reading through this at a quick pace, I will have to keep an eye on Tron’s future projects!
As usual, my review is a mess and proves I’m more of a storyteller than an analytical mind, but oh well. Even though I’m aware of that shortcoming, I will keep at it. This boy don’t know how to quit! Hope my stream-of-consciousness ramblings were at least entertaining if not cogent!
March 13, 2025
Amazing
March 9, 2025
A thoughtfully well written memoir about a tough time in the author's life. Gina Tron looks back on bullying and accusations of school shooting with important insights into that time of her life. There are lessons here for all.
March 24, 2025
Good Lord. Gina Tron has been through it. I'm not gonna lie, this one hit close to home. Not so much, as I originally expected, for the school shooting angle, as for Tron's cleareyed recollection and pitch perfect recounting of what it was like to be a teenager in the years defined by Columbine and 9/11. There was something in the air - a rising miasma of ambient, commercialized dread that could feel, at times, almost sentient (and has definitely achieved a degree of hivemind autonomy in the decades since). It was inescapable, and for Tron, it meant getting swept up in an overreactionary wave of smalltown paranoia after she and a friend left a joke death threat on their bully's car and signed it stupidly (sure), immaturely (no question), but also very much regrettably (they could have no idea how much), "Love, the Trenchcoat Mafia."
They didn't mean it. Like, of course they didn't mean it. They were just dumb teenagers being dumb. It seems absurd, looking back from our present climate in which empty death threats are flung around the internet by the thousands every day and no one bats an eye, that anyone could have thought for a moment these two were a danger to anyone. But having also seen firsthand what the aftermath of such an incident can do to a community (I am a survivor of the first post-Columbine school shooting - one month later to the day - Heritage High School, 6 wounded, no dead), I was honestly not surprised by a single development in Tron's harrowing tale of smalltown pariahship. In less than two years, both high school, and America had became suddenly and irreversibly less safe. People were angry, and afraid, and many were out for blood.
By drawing on her own diaries (let this be a lesson to all you budding writers out there - keep a journal - your crazy teenage thoughts could someday be invaluable - I wish I'd done it more), Tron recaptures her daily life in a way that feels as real and fresh as a self-inflicted wrist wound, to the point that I regularly caught myself picturing her in my mind's eye wandering my own high school's parking lot and halls. Likewise, her attention to fashion and pop cultural details brought so many memories screaming back to me in all their cringeworthy glory that I had half a mind to go burn my yearbooks on the lawn. Not only was the now-so-ubiquitous-we-don't-even-think-about-it trend of brand logo t-shirts just starting to turn us all into walking billboards, but at this same time corporate America was also figuring out how to finally commodify the long-separate bastion of the counterculture; to corner the final market on idividuality.
If 80's and early 90's teenagerdom was often reduced to a class war between rich, popular kids who listened to Top 40 radio and shopped at the mall vs. weird, poor kids who watched MTV and shopped at K-Mart, then the chief project of the late 90's and aughts was to make sure we all had expensive places to design and outfit our budding senses of self (and ready-made popular music with which to soundtrack them). Tron's heartfelt devotion to goth culture - Delia's and Hot Topic; thick mascara and spiked dog collars; Korn and Marilyn Manson - and her certainty that these corporate chains and mass-produced provocations could function as meaningful signifiers, indicative of her pain and rage and misunderstood, outsider authenticity (none of which is to suggest I was immune by the way - for me it was Rage Against the Machine and Tool and several years of spiked blue and black hair that I feel 100% positive contributed to my premature baldness), drives home again and again the countless ways in which anyone currently under 45 has pretty much had both their personal identity, and their insecurities about same, monetized and sold back to them from the moment they were old enough to receive an allowance. We defined ourselves in opposition to one another - as much by what we liked as by what we decidedly didn't - and no matter what we chose, someone was always more than happy to take our money.
Indeed, it's always felt like a one-in-a-million confluence (or at least one-in-a-thousand) the way the end of the millennium also ended up marking the end of a certain kind of innocence for humanity. I am only a couple years young than Tron, and I still have fond, concrete memories of life before the internet, but I have friends just a year or two younger than me who simply don't. The cutoff is that sharp. And for the narrow band of people who experienced the cusp in this way - who grew up surfing the bleeding edge of the information age - there exists a shared understanding of ourselves as a generation of guinea pigs; the real-time test market for every new advancement in online life. Social media wasn't quite a "thing" yet, but kids went home every night and sent each other e-mails or chatted on ICQ and AIM about the news of the day - comparing notes and spreading gossip at a faster clip than ever before - ushering in and normalizing the now fully-integrated panopticon in which we all now live. With the exceptions of a few major, monocultural celebrity scandals, a person couldn't really get "canceled" by society at large in the year 2000, but they damn sure could by their high school. The edgy, "too soon" humor of Tron's fateful letter, and the casual cruelty of proto-Karens like Sarah (the heinous frenemy-turned-tormentor to whom it was addressed) were just waiting for a platform to go wide, and there's no screen wider than the world wide web. One of the coolest things about Suspect is how, without really even trying to, it can't help but reflect back our present moment, and all the ways in which these nascent technologies weaponized millennials' worst youthful impulses, infecting everything with the simplistic, us vs. them dynamics of high school, effectively changing the nature of adulthood through us until it came to resemble something much closer to permanent adolescence (needless to say, this is not a phenomenon that has gotten better in the time since).
Tron, again unsurprisingly, received her death threat back 100-fold in the wake of her regrettable joke. From fellow students and adults alike. She was judged relentlessly and ostracized through graduation for this one mistake. She dealt with anger, depression, loneliness, alienation, and self-harm. She was barred from her prom, and by her own admission, was extraordinarily lucky to stay out of jail. These statements alone should serve to illustrate the climate. People should have known better, but they were angry, and scared, and out for blood. Though we've had dozens of statistically worse mass shootings in the 26 years since Columbine, it still remains in many ways the standard-bearer. We've made multiple movies about it. Everyone knows those boys' names. It genuinely did change everything; the starting gun in a marathon of violence that has, bleakly, tragically, grown and metastasized and been resignedly accepted as just another part of life in the United States. Tron, for her part, pretty clearly saw her life forever changed as a direct result, and has written extensively on the subject outside of this book. Her journalistic tenacity shines through as she peppers in fascinating statistics about the kinds of kids who commit these acts, the way other kids view and relate to them (both before and after; in real life and in the abstract), and the way they're covered in the media. As smart as it is heartfelt, Suspect cements Tron as a powerful voice in this ongoing and vital conversation. Though she didn't have to endure an actual school shooting, there's no doubt that she's a survivor too. I'm so glad she made it out, and found the courage to write it all down.
On a final note, for anyone interested to read more about my own school shooting experience (and a few of those Columbine movies) please check out my hybrid essay "Art for Our Lives" on Cinedump.com (link at bottom). I repost this semi-regularly - pretty much any time America faces another of these senseless atrocities, and America's leaders do nothing in response. I hope there will come a point when I never have to post it again.
https://www.cinedump.com/musings/2021...
They didn't mean it. Like, of course they didn't mean it. They were just dumb teenagers being dumb. It seems absurd, looking back from our present climate in which empty death threats are flung around the internet by the thousands every day and no one bats an eye, that anyone could have thought for a moment these two were a danger to anyone. But having also seen firsthand what the aftermath of such an incident can do to a community (I am a survivor of the first post-Columbine school shooting - one month later to the day - Heritage High School, 6 wounded, no dead), I was honestly not surprised by a single development in Tron's harrowing tale of smalltown pariahship. In less than two years, both high school, and America had became suddenly and irreversibly less safe. People were angry, and afraid, and many were out for blood.
By drawing on her own diaries (let this be a lesson to all you budding writers out there - keep a journal - your crazy teenage thoughts could someday be invaluable - I wish I'd done it more), Tron recaptures her daily life in a way that feels as real and fresh as a self-inflicted wrist wound, to the point that I regularly caught myself picturing her in my mind's eye wandering my own high school's parking lot and halls. Likewise, her attention to fashion and pop cultural details brought so many memories screaming back to me in all their cringeworthy glory that I had half a mind to go burn my yearbooks on the lawn. Not only was the now-so-ubiquitous-we-don't-even-think-about-it trend of brand logo t-shirts just starting to turn us all into walking billboards, but at this same time corporate America was also figuring out how to finally commodify the long-separate bastion of the counterculture; to corner the final market on idividuality.
If 80's and early 90's teenagerdom was often reduced to a class war between rich, popular kids who listened to Top 40 radio and shopped at the mall vs. weird, poor kids who watched MTV and shopped at K-Mart, then the chief project of the late 90's and aughts was to make sure we all had expensive places to design and outfit our budding senses of self (and ready-made popular music with which to soundtrack them). Tron's heartfelt devotion to goth culture - Delia's and Hot Topic; thick mascara and spiked dog collars; Korn and Marilyn Manson - and her certainty that these corporate chains and mass-produced provocations could function as meaningful signifiers, indicative of her pain and rage and misunderstood, outsider authenticity (none of which is to suggest I was immune by the way - for me it was Rage Against the Machine and Tool and several years of spiked blue and black hair that I feel 100% positive contributed to my premature baldness), drives home again and again the countless ways in which anyone currently under 45 has pretty much had both their personal identity, and their insecurities about same, monetized and sold back to them from the moment they were old enough to receive an allowance. We defined ourselves in opposition to one another - as much by what we liked as by what we decidedly didn't - and no matter what we chose, someone was always more than happy to take our money.
Indeed, it's always felt like a one-in-a-million confluence (or at least one-in-a-thousand) the way the end of the millennium also ended up marking the end of a certain kind of innocence for humanity. I am only a couple years young than Tron, and I still have fond, concrete memories of life before the internet, but I have friends just a year or two younger than me who simply don't. The cutoff is that sharp. And for the narrow band of people who experienced the cusp in this way - who grew up surfing the bleeding edge of the information age - there exists a shared understanding of ourselves as a generation of guinea pigs; the real-time test market for every new advancement in online life. Social media wasn't quite a "thing" yet, but kids went home every night and sent each other e-mails or chatted on ICQ and AIM about the news of the day - comparing notes and spreading gossip at a faster clip than ever before - ushering in and normalizing the now fully-integrated panopticon in which we all now live. With the exceptions of a few major, monocultural celebrity scandals, a person couldn't really get "canceled" by society at large in the year 2000, but they damn sure could by their high school. The edgy, "too soon" humor of Tron's fateful letter, and the casual cruelty of proto-Karens like Sarah (the heinous frenemy-turned-tormentor to whom it was addressed) were just waiting for a platform to go wide, and there's no screen wider than the world wide web. One of the coolest things about Suspect is how, without really even trying to, it can't help but reflect back our present moment, and all the ways in which these nascent technologies weaponized millennials' worst youthful impulses, infecting everything with the simplistic, us vs. them dynamics of high school, effectively changing the nature of adulthood through us until it came to resemble something much closer to permanent adolescence (needless to say, this is not a phenomenon that has gotten better in the time since).
Tron, again unsurprisingly, received her death threat back 100-fold in the wake of her regrettable joke. From fellow students and adults alike. She was judged relentlessly and ostracized through graduation for this one mistake. She dealt with anger, depression, loneliness, alienation, and self-harm. She was barred from her prom, and by her own admission, was extraordinarily lucky to stay out of jail. These statements alone should serve to illustrate the climate. People should have known better, but they were angry, and scared, and out for blood. Though we've had dozens of statistically worse mass shootings in the 26 years since Columbine, it still remains in many ways the standard-bearer. We've made multiple movies about it. Everyone knows those boys' names. It genuinely did change everything; the starting gun in a marathon of violence that has, bleakly, tragically, grown and metastasized and been resignedly accepted as just another part of life in the United States. Tron, for her part, pretty clearly saw her life forever changed as a direct result, and has written extensively on the subject outside of this book. Her journalistic tenacity shines through as she peppers in fascinating statistics about the kinds of kids who commit these acts, the way other kids view and relate to them (both before and after; in real life and in the abstract), and the way they're covered in the media. As smart as it is heartfelt, Suspect cements Tron as a powerful voice in this ongoing and vital conversation. Though she didn't have to endure an actual school shooting, there's no doubt that she's a survivor too. I'm so glad she made it out, and found the courage to write it all down.
On a final note, for anyone interested to read more about my own school shooting experience (and a few of those Columbine movies) please check out my hybrid essay "Art for Our Lives" on Cinedump.com (link at bottom). I repost this semi-regularly - pretty much any time America faces another of these senseless atrocities, and America's leaders do nothing in response. I hope there will come a point when I never have to post it again.
https://www.cinedump.com/musings/2021...
February 16, 2025
A well-written personal and political look at bullying and violence in American childhood and teenage culture that’s sure to make you think. I thoroughly enjoyed this honest book, based on the author’s own life but also intertwined with pop culture facts on mass shootings and the nature of victim hood. Tron doesn’t hold back, writing about her own fears and desires and also about the “blur of jerky peers” she grew up with. Part personal analysis and part treaty on the obsession with violence in America (hint: maybe it’s the guns!), I recommend this book for anyone who likes personal memoirs that have something to teach you.
March 20, 2025
There is a scene in Gina Tron’s memoir, Suspect (Whiskey Tit, 2024), that has stayed with me since I read it. On the author’s twelfth birthday, she invites over friends, and the girls give her gifts. One gift is a set of used earrings. The other is a pile of fake dog shit. The friends, after Tron’s mother leaves the room, say their parents gave them money to purchase real gifts, but they decided instead to spend it on Orange Julius drinks and fries at the mall. Tron then hands them party favors she lovingly wrapped for them, trying to convince herself she’s in on the joke rather than the butt of it.
This book is about a kind of bullying most of us are familiar with from films such as Mean Girls and, if you’re older, like Tron and like me, The Heathers. It’s about the kind of girls who give other girls eating disorders and body complexes. It’s about the kind of girls who fly under the radar of the adults around them by playing the game right.
Parts of Tron’s story may be familiar to readers: The book is based on a viral essay of hers that was published in VICE in 2013, called “I Was a Suspected School Shooter.” In the essay, and in her memoir, Tron describes trying desperately to fit into the Vermont town she and her family moved to when she was in grade school. Her clothes are wrong, the way she speaks is wrong, her parents’ liberalism is wrong.
Plus, the ’90s were a different time. Tron mentions how she and her friends used words like “fag” to describe those they didn’t like. (We all did, even those among us who would later come out as queer). It was a time when difference was treated as suspect. Who among us didn’t have a gym teacher who would let the mean behavior of the pretty girls slide while cracking down on the stoners, the alt kids, and the “freaks”? Who didn’t have a school principal who would rather punish the kid of the town’s recently relocated outsider family than the family who owned half the city? Tron’s story isn’t an unusual one, unfortunately, even if the details are a bit more extreme than many.
In my own memories of the ’90s, even though I was an alternative kid, even though I was a closeted queer kid, I don’t recall being bullied the way that Tron was throughout her school life more than on one or two isolated occasions. On these rare occasions, the rotary phone at my parents’ house rang incessantly, and whatever mean girls were on the other end hung up the moment someone answered. Annoying as it was, it was hardly the bullying Tron endured. Nevertheless, I felt this story was incredibly relatable. It’s a story of trying to fit in and failing, of figuring out that you’re not the one with the problems, but the culture of your high school or the parents and teachers around you just might be.
After the birthday party, Tron’s friends grow increasingly vicious, as Tron, for a long time, cowers. Then, when she is sent away to an arts summer camp, she meets girls like herself—girls who listen to Marilyn Manson and wear fishnet stockings and combat boots, girls who aren’t afraid to dye their hair like the main character of My So-Called Life. Buoyed by this summer of freedom and acceptance, Tron comes back to high school and befriends another alternative girl, to the chagrin of her self-proclaimed best friend, Sarah. Sarah stages a dramatic friend breakup with Tron, and the bullying intensifies. Sarah makes up a bizarre lie about Tron losing her mind after a bad acid trip—based on little more than Tron’s alternative style—that everyone believes. But this time, having experienced acceptance, Tron recognizes she is being bullied.
To enact revenge, Tron and her new friend leave a death threat on Sarah’s car, signed, “Love, The Trenchcoat Mafia.” It’s 1999, and the Columbine High School shootings have just taken place. Sarah accuses Tron of being a school shooter and spreads a rumor that Tron is planning to kill everyone who has dated her crush.
Tron’s school is shut down for days, and her death threat receives copious coverage in their local news. She and the friend who helped her leave the note are banned from school events, and Tron remains “that school shooter girl” until she leaves for college. Those of us who didn’t fit in growing up may see ourselves in Tron. Even her bad decisions, like lashing out at her bullies, are ones that feel relatable, if things were just a little different.
In a twist worthy of a high-school movie, Tron is now happily married to the crush whom Sarah and her bullies said she was ready to kill over.
Tron writes that she doesn’t wish to eviscerate anyone’s teen self, herself or even Sarah:
“I am not aiming to avenge or shame anyone, particularly any actions of adolescents, myself included. Rather, the details of some of the included events are meant to paint a picture that I hope can give back in some meaningful way. I hope that those who see themselves within these pages feel less alone.”
This empathy and wide-angled view are on display throughout the memoir, giving everyone an even chance at redemption.
But this book isn’t just a memoir. There are interludes where Tron the adult, and experienced journalist, provides context for the era— – discussions of the school shootings that plague America today and their roots; of the music video for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” and the effect it had on ’90s culture by giving sympathy to a boy that the video suggested could have been a classroom shooter himself (the real Jeremy died by suicide in front of a classroom); of the phenomenon of hero worship of school shooters from young men and women who assume them to be victims of bullying like themselves.
Tron captures this time without sentimentality, and with a very clear lens, in part because of the many years she’s spent working as a journalist, and in part because she kept meticulous journals throughout her adolescence. Even when Tron verges into something like admiration for school shooters—writing in her journal about how she could be like them and sending letters to pen pal strangers about the cults that grew up around them—it is pretty clear that it’s a corner she’s been forced into. Admitting such a thing feels dangerous, today. It was dangerous then too, but the ’90s depicted in this book are so vivid that it’s like being in them again. Maybe the world is better now. Or maybe, as many of the journalistic interludes in this book hint at, it’s just as bad in a different way.
This book is about a kind of bullying most of us are familiar with from films such as Mean Girls and, if you’re older, like Tron and like me, The Heathers. It’s about the kind of girls who give other girls eating disorders and body complexes. It’s about the kind of girls who fly under the radar of the adults around them by playing the game right.
Parts of Tron’s story may be familiar to readers: The book is based on a viral essay of hers that was published in VICE in 2013, called “I Was a Suspected School Shooter.” In the essay, and in her memoir, Tron describes trying desperately to fit into the Vermont town she and her family moved to when she was in grade school. Her clothes are wrong, the way she speaks is wrong, her parents’ liberalism is wrong.
Plus, the ’90s were a different time. Tron mentions how she and her friends used words like “fag” to describe those they didn’t like. (We all did, even those among us who would later come out as queer). It was a time when difference was treated as suspect. Who among us didn’t have a gym teacher who would let the mean behavior of the pretty girls slide while cracking down on the stoners, the alt kids, and the “freaks”? Who didn’t have a school principal who would rather punish the kid of the town’s recently relocated outsider family than the family who owned half the city? Tron’s story isn’t an unusual one, unfortunately, even if the details are a bit more extreme than many.
In my own memories of the ’90s, even though I was an alternative kid, even though I was a closeted queer kid, I don’t recall being bullied the way that Tron was throughout her school life more than on one or two isolated occasions. On these rare occasions, the rotary phone at my parents’ house rang incessantly, and whatever mean girls were on the other end hung up the moment someone answered. Annoying as it was, it was hardly the bullying Tron endured. Nevertheless, I felt this story was incredibly relatable. It’s a story of trying to fit in and failing, of figuring out that you’re not the one with the problems, but the culture of your high school or the parents and teachers around you just might be.
After the birthday party, Tron’s friends grow increasingly vicious, as Tron, for a long time, cowers. Then, when she is sent away to an arts summer camp, she meets girls like herself—girls who listen to Marilyn Manson and wear fishnet stockings and combat boots, girls who aren’t afraid to dye their hair like the main character of My So-Called Life. Buoyed by this summer of freedom and acceptance, Tron comes back to high school and befriends another alternative girl, to the chagrin of her self-proclaimed best friend, Sarah. Sarah stages a dramatic friend breakup with Tron, and the bullying intensifies. Sarah makes up a bizarre lie about Tron losing her mind after a bad acid trip—based on little more than Tron’s alternative style—that everyone believes. But this time, having experienced acceptance, Tron recognizes she is being bullied.
To enact revenge, Tron and her new friend leave a death threat on Sarah’s car, signed, “Love, The Trenchcoat Mafia.” It’s 1999, and the Columbine High School shootings have just taken place. Sarah accuses Tron of being a school shooter and spreads a rumor that Tron is planning to kill everyone who has dated her crush.
Tron’s school is shut down for days, and her death threat receives copious coverage in their local news. She and the friend who helped her leave the note are banned from school events, and Tron remains “that school shooter girl” until she leaves for college. Those of us who didn’t fit in growing up may see ourselves in Tron. Even her bad decisions, like lashing out at her bullies, are ones that feel relatable, if things were just a little different.
In a twist worthy of a high-school movie, Tron is now happily married to the crush whom Sarah and her bullies said she was ready to kill over.
Tron writes that she doesn’t wish to eviscerate anyone’s teen self, herself or even Sarah:
“I am not aiming to avenge or shame anyone, particularly any actions of adolescents, myself included. Rather, the details of some of the included events are meant to paint a picture that I hope can give back in some meaningful way. I hope that those who see themselves within these pages feel less alone.”
This empathy and wide-angled view are on display throughout the memoir, giving everyone an even chance at redemption.
But this book isn’t just a memoir. There are interludes where Tron the adult, and experienced journalist, provides context for the era— – discussions of the school shootings that plague America today and their roots; of the music video for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” and the effect it had on ’90s culture by giving sympathy to a boy that the video suggested could have been a classroom shooter himself (the real Jeremy died by suicide in front of a classroom); of the phenomenon of hero worship of school shooters from young men and women who assume them to be victims of bullying like themselves.
Tron captures this time without sentimentality, and with a very clear lens, in part because of the many years she’s spent working as a journalist, and in part because she kept meticulous journals throughout her adolescence. Even when Tron verges into something like admiration for school shooters—writing in her journal about how she could be like them and sending letters to pen pal strangers about the cults that grew up around them—it is pretty clear that it’s a corner she’s been forced into. Admitting such a thing feels dangerous, today. It was dangerous then too, but the ’90s depicted in this book are so vivid that it’s like being in them again. Maybe the world is better now. Or maybe, as many of the journalistic interludes in this book hint at, it’s just as bad in a different way.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2024
Gina Tron’s newest memoir, Suspect, is both an unflinching examination of the events that led to the unfounded accusations by classmates that Tron was planning an attack, as well as a look at the still sparse landscape that informs what we know about the motives behind school shooting events today.
As an educator and former school administrator who has spent time daily tackling bullying issues at the elementary school level, I plan to recommend this book to my colleagues. The memoir highlights a particularly important opportunity for educators to engage in a first hand perspective of the impact of school bullying that truly gets to the heart of what every good educator should hold true: that each child is a complex human learning to be human, all while wanting what each of us wants- to be seen and liked simply for being yourself.
This is Tron’s best memoir yet. Five stars.
As an educator and former school administrator who has spent time daily tackling bullying issues at the elementary school level, I plan to recommend this book to my colleagues. The memoir highlights a particularly important opportunity for educators to engage in a first hand perspective of the impact of school bullying that truly gets to the heart of what every good educator should hold true: that each child is a complex human learning to be human, all while wanting what each of us wants- to be seen and liked simply for being yourself.
This is Tron’s best memoir yet. Five stars.
January 3, 2025
In Suspect, Gina Tron approaches her adolescence with the relevance of mainstay social issues while centered around a coming-of-age story filled with a heart still spilling fresh blood from old wounds. Her journey is seeped in the cruelty and absurdity of growing up in small-town America, and how the authority figures trained to protect and guide our children are also the ones who can ultimately ruin them for many years. Tron's words feel like sitting down with drinks and commiserating over shared childhood traumas you can now digest with the type of humor that only close friends will understand. Brutal in the story it tells, but empathetic and gracious in its delivery, Suspect is now one of my favorite books, and we're lucky it exists.
January 24, 2025
This book is gripping, incisive, and tender--I couldn't put it down. It's beautifully written--a masterful display of heart, wit, courage, and grace. And it really transports you both to the 90s and back to high school, a journey that is thrilling and also excruciating in the best possible way.
January 5, 2025
This was such a great read, a deep dive back into the teenage years of the 90s against the backdrop of school violence, and even (especially) mass hysteria. Gina Tron adds a voice unlike any other, one that takes a curious approach to a unique time she lived through. I read it in just one sitting, and couldn’t get through the pages fast enough.
March 28, 2025
I read this smart, heart-rending book in one sitting—couldn’t put it down. Gina Tron’s writing grips you and doesn’t let you go!
September 23, 2025
A powerful and honest account of a youth being swept up in a culture of moral panic and paranoia. It happened before and it can happen again, we ignore her story at our peril.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews