What do you think?
Rate this book
Bloomland
Bloomland opens during finals week at a fictional southern university, when a student walks into the library with his roommate’s semi-automatic rifle and opens fire. When he stops shooting, twelve people are dead.
In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor. As the community wrestles with the fallout, Bloomland interrogates social and cultural dysfunction in a nation where mass violence has become all too familiar.
In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor. As the community wrestles with the fallout, Bloomland interrogates social and cultural dysfunction in a nation where mass violence has become all too familiar.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 10, 2019
23 people are currently reading
749 people want to read
About the author
John Englehardt
1 book21 followersJohn Englehardt is the author of the novel Bloomland, forthcoming from Dzanc Books on September 10th, 2019. In 2014, he received an MFA from the University of Arkansas, and was a 2015/16 Made at Hugo House fellow. He has won awards such as the Wabash Prize in Fiction, The Stranger’s A&P fiction contest, and The Conium Review’s 2014 flash fiction contest. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Sycamore Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Moss, Monkeybicycle, and The Seattle Review of Books. He currently resides in Seattle Washington with his wife and dog, waiting tables and teaching writing classes at Hugo House.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
June 18, 2019
Being told by an onlooker (2nd person POV) furnishes immediacy to this narrative which I think it would otherwise lack. This is a timely novel that scrutinizes a fatal shooting at a university library during finals week. The account of what motivates the shooter to commit his bloody act is no less affecting than the grief and aftermath of the shooting. Amid the details about the three main characters’ lives, there is a subtlety that carries with it incisive commentary about contemporary society, gun violence, and the solitary lives we all lead to one degree or another. Be prepared for a weighty read that will make an impression.
September 12, 2025
My Shelf Awareness review: Englehardt's potent debut novel offers a nuanced account of the backstory and aftermath of a mass shooting on a fictional Arkansas college campus.
The rotating second-person narration draws readers into the action and creates sympathy for three main characters: Rose, a student who is romantically involved with one of the people injured; Eddie, a professor whose wife dies in the massacre; and Eli, the shooter. Both Rose and Eli lost their mothers at age 11. Englehardt resists clichéd predictors of violence, such as a dysfunctional family (Rose had the more traumatic upbringing than Eli) or cruelty toward animals (Eli quit after one day of debeaking chickens at a poultry factory).
The narrative builds through engrossing flashbacks and vignettes, and moves into the future to examine how the Ozarka University campus and wider community address issues of guilt and vengeance. Gradually, it becomes clear that there is an "I" here: creative writing professor Steven Bressinger. Rose, Eddie, and Eli are all fully realized characters, yet the question of how Dr. Bressinger accesses their memories and emotions is intriguing.
Originally published in 2019 and winner of the VCU Cabell First Novel Award, Bloomland avoids lurid scenes and cheap cause-and-effect language. Englehardt writes gorgeous sentences, even about suburbia ("You start driving down MLK, past the mass grave of dollar stores, under the even clouds converging like one stoic slab of ice"). The perennial aptness of the novel is clear: "you wonder if the scariest thing about all this is not that life can't return to normal, but that it already has." It's a subtle and timely gem.
(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.)
[From my initial reading in 2019: Especially after Gilroy and El Paso, I wasn’t sure I’d have the heart to pick up a novel about a mass shooting at (fictional) Ozarka University, Arkansas. But I’m very glad I did.]
The rotating second-person narration draws readers into the action and creates sympathy for three main characters: Rose, a student who is romantically involved with one of the people injured; Eddie, a professor whose wife dies in the massacre; and Eli, the shooter. Both Rose and Eli lost their mothers at age 11. Englehardt resists clichéd predictors of violence, such as a dysfunctional family (Rose had the more traumatic upbringing than Eli) or cruelty toward animals (Eli quit after one day of debeaking chickens at a poultry factory).
The narrative builds through engrossing flashbacks and vignettes, and moves into the future to examine how the Ozarka University campus and wider community address issues of guilt and vengeance. Gradually, it becomes clear that there is an "I" here: creative writing professor Steven Bressinger. Rose, Eddie, and Eli are all fully realized characters, yet the question of how Dr. Bressinger accesses their memories and emotions is intriguing.
Originally published in 2019 and winner of the VCU Cabell First Novel Award, Bloomland avoids lurid scenes and cheap cause-and-effect language. Englehardt writes gorgeous sentences, even about suburbia ("You start driving down MLK, past the mass grave of dollar stores, under the even clouds converging like one stoic slab of ice"). The perennial aptness of the novel is clear: "you wonder if the scariest thing about all this is not that life can't return to normal, but that it already has." It's a subtle and timely gem.
(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.)
[From my initial reading in 2019: Especially after Gilroy and El Paso, I wasn’t sure I’d have the heart to pick up a novel about a mass shooting at (fictional) Ozarka University, Arkansas. But I’m very glad I did.]
December 3, 2019
In this debut novel, “Bloomland”, by John Englehardt, a college campus shooting is the main action/reaction, but it is the masterfully rendered characters that really propel this beautifully written, unforgettable novel.
Two things especially stand out about this work. The first is the unique narrative voice. I’ve never before read what I can only describe as a first person/second person “blend” omniscient narrative voice. Our narrator, whose name we don’t even learn until almost half-way through the book, narrates each section as if recounting the thoughts and actions TO the character. For example, Rose is the first character we are introduced to and here is the first line: “Six years before college, you are under a queen-sized mattress with you grandma and brother.” In this manner, we learn everything about the three main characters: Rose, Eddie, and Eli. Their actions, their thoughts, their dreams, their nightmares. How could a narrator know these most intimate things? By actually being the author himself, of course! Englehardt writes, “But you? The writer? Your job is to love your characters. To know them like you know yourself.” And he DOES love them, even the one who is a mass murderer.
And that’s the second thing of note about this work; the gorgeous prose that reveals these three characters, all of whom have had significant trauma but all of whom react differently to their wounding. This is a psychological-character-study novel like no other.
What or where is the titular “Bloomland”? At one point our narrator notes that college/the University experience, should be a bloomland for “romance and psychological growth”. Yet in reality, it can be isolating. As isolating as a prison cell.
Englehardt’s “Bloomland” asks readers to ponder many deep issues without any pat or certain answers. You’ll be thinking about this novel for a while, and you’ll want to stay tuned to this talented new author.
Two things especially stand out about this work. The first is the unique narrative voice. I’ve never before read what I can only describe as a first person/second person “blend” omniscient narrative voice. Our narrator, whose name we don’t even learn until almost half-way through the book, narrates each section as if recounting the thoughts and actions TO the character. For example, Rose is the first character we are introduced to and here is the first line: “Six years before college, you are under a queen-sized mattress with you grandma and brother.” In this manner, we learn everything about the three main characters: Rose, Eddie, and Eli. Their actions, their thoughts, their dreams, their nightmares. How could a narrator know these most intimate things? By actually being the author himself, of course! Englehardt writes, “But you? The writer? Your job is to love your characters. To know them like you know yourself.” And he DOES love them, even the one who is a mass murderer.
And that’s the second thing of note about this work; the gorgeous prose that reveals these three characters, all of whom have had significant trauma but all of whom react differently to their wounding. This is a psychological-character-study novel like no other.
What or where is the titular “Bloomland”? At one point our narrator notes that college/the University experience, should be a bloomland for “romance and psychological growth”. Yet in reality, it can be isolating. As isolating as a prison cell.
Englehardt’s “Bloomland” asks readers to ponder many deep issues without any pat or certain answers. You’ll be thinking about this novel for a while, and you’ll want to stay tuned to this talented new author.
January 12, 2020
You're trapped inside a book. You spiral downward. The reason you are here is that this little book is getting superlative reviews. It is profound and powerful. But for some reason you just don't get it. The characters seem of the same cloth. They are not comfortable in their own skin. The three narrators (or is there a fourth when the story abruptly changes from 2nd person to 1st person ???) flirt with violence or self destructive behavior and may be clinically depressed. Only one chooses mass murder but you cringe when another goes out and buys the exact same weapon as the shooter, the third fondles a knife. You can't relate to any of these people. Ultimately you decide you are not an unintelligent person and it is okay to be confused.
April 22, 2020
Review to come.
And here it is:
https://www.theliteraryreview.org/boo...
And here it is:
https://www.theliteraryreview.org/boo...
November 25, 2019
With more than 370 mass shootings in 2019 alone, it’s easy enough to get inured with the real and tragic consequences of our ridiculously gun-happy society. But Bloomland by John Englehardt breaks through. It opens during final week at Ozarka, a fictional Arkansas university, when a student walks into the library with a modified SK5 assault rifle. The consequence is familiar—many are left dead—but the telling of this story is most assuredly not.
Englehardt invites his readers to inhabit the minds of his three key characters—Rose, a student whose life was marked with tragedy when her grandmother/caregiver was killed in a massive tornado...Eddie, a professor who experienced death when his mother was killed in a particularly heinous auto accident…and Eli, the disconnected shooter whose idea of finding meaning is to rob his victims of their own free will.
Early on, Englehardt gives a hint about his title and what he wants to accomplish when he writes about the school: “Coming here was supposed to give you ideals to help navigate the seas of adulthood…You imagined it as some bloomland of romance and psychological growth. Instead, it has given you nights alone in a cinderblock dorm room.”
All around the university, the hypocritical religious signs stand out: “We stand with you. Prepare for judgement day. Jesus saves.” But these pious signs contrast with messages of hate: “Diversity is another word for white genocide.” And after the shooting: “100% death penalty and encarseration (sic) isn’t enough.” It’s a hypocritical world where proclamations of religion stand in direct opposition to the social dysfunction and disconnection of the real world. Once Eli commits his dark deed, the narrator (who is speaking for Eli) writes, “”You were overlooked, disenfranchised, promised one thing and given another. The only thing that should be discussed is how strong your impulse became to release this pain back into the world.”
Now, that may seem as if the author is siding with the victim, but that is not the case. The horrific fallout is also portrayed, using the “you” perspective. Englehardt’s aim is for us to gain an understanding of Eli (and indeed, all his characters), not necessarily to like them or to think their actions are justifiable.
He leaves behind questions to ponder: how do we fight the sense of disconnection at a time when professors “go home, pour whiskey into a tallboy, and grade papers until...marginal comments turn into surly acronyms and interrobangs?” How do we give our solitary lives greater meaning? How do we examine the decay of those who are dying on the inside? How do we get over retreating to a sliver of life that we can’t even call our own? This book will make you feel—and think. Thanks to Dzanc Books for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Englehardt invites his readers to inhabit the minds of his three key characters—Rose, a student whose life was marked with tragedy when her grandmother/caregiver was killed in a massive tornado...Eddie, a professor who experienced death when his mother was killed in a particularly heinous auto accident…and Eli, the disconnected shooter whose idea of finding meaning is to rob his victims of their own free will.
Early on, Englehardt gives a hint about his title and what he wants to accomplish when he writes about the school: “Coming here was supposed to give you ideals to help navigate the seas of adulthood…You imagined it as some bloomland of romance and psychological growth. Instead, it has given you nights alone in a cinderblock dorm room.”
All around the university, the hypocritical religious signs stand out: “We stand with you. Prepare for judgement day. Jesus saves.” But these pious signs contrast with messages of hate: “Diversity is another word for white genocide.” And after the shooting: “100% death penalty and encarseration (sic) isn’t enough.” It’s a hypocritical world where proclamations of religion stand in direct opposition to the social dysfunction and disconnection of the real world. Once Eli commits his dark deed, the narrator (who is speaking for Eli) writes, “”You were overlooked, disenfranchised, promised one thing and given another. The only thing that should be discussed is how strong your impulse became to release this pain back into the world.”
Now, that may seem as if the author is siding with the victim, but that is not the case. The horrific fallout is also portrayed, using the “you” perspective. Englehardt’s aim is for us to gain an understanding of Eli (and indeed, all his characters), not necessarily to like them or to think their actions are justifiable.
He leaves behind questions to ponder: how do we fight the sense of disconnection at a time when professors “go home, pour whiskey into a tallboy, and grade papers until...marginal comments turn into surly acronyms and interrobangs?” How do we give our solitary lives greater meaning? How do we examine the decay of those who are dying on the inside? How do we get over retreating to a sliver of life that we can’t even call our own? This book will make you feel—and think. Thanks to Dzanc Books for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
June 16, 2023
Seemed to jump around a lot.
December 12, 2019
On the surface, Bloomland is a novel about a mass shooting in a university library and the impact it has on the survivors, families of the dead, and the shooter. What makes this novel different from the multiple books about mass shootings, is the existential bent of each character and every act. The gist of Sartre's idea of existential freedom and aloneness is that 'existence precedes essence', or 'being precedes action'. The characters in this book tackle their fears of who and what they are as individuals within themselves as well as what they do in an often puzzling, dangerous and unwelcome world.
Eli is the shooter who is struggling with his life, especially since his mother died in a horrible car wreck when he was a boy. He goes to therapy following her death but he doesn't find it helpful. He bottles up his grief and, for the most part, it comes out sideways as he chooses a dark and lonely path for himself and fails to connect with others except in weed intoxicated states. He tries creative writing and then decides to give it up. "This makes you feel better, even though giving up has always felt like a failure. The difference now is that the end is coming, which means the worse things get, the closer you are to reaching the border of your darkness." Eli ruminates about which aspects of his life will be pinpointed as catalysts for his shooting rampage. He wonders why others "are so engaged by this life and convinced that it is saturated with meaning. They don't know that you are waiting for the moment that will unravel everything".
Rose is a young woman attending Ozarkia University. She has suffered great trauma as a child, watching her grandmother die in a tornado and her whole town get destroyed by this horrific act of nature. Rose tries to make sense of her life after this tragedy. She attempts to show others "that she lives in a world where life can get better after an unthinkable loss". She tries to act 'normal', joins a sorority, and participates in their activities. When faced with another trauma, she realizes that 'normal' is not her state of mind, nor her observations of what life is. She is not Miss Pink Faced Sorority Girl. After she meets Scott, a sculptor and survivor of the shooting, she thinks of "trauma taking a physical shape, shadows growing out of sculptures like ectoplasmic specters". What actions will Rose take as she journeys forward? Will she find something inside herself to provide positive life experience or will her trauma empty her and provide her road map for life?
Eddie is a visiting assistant professor of English at Ozarkia whose wife Casey is killed in the shooting. Their marriage has been a vortex, pulling them down a road of misunderstandings and undisguised resentments. However, post-shooting, Eddie "realizes that this year, like all the ones ahead of it, will travel in a circle that leads back to Casey's death". Eddie ruminates about his marriage, the shooting, and even comes up with some conspiracy theories. A counselor gives Eddie wise advice, "that only a fool would run through the rain to escape it". Eddie believes this is true but he is not ready to hear it. Will Eddie be able to move on or is he trapped in his memories forever?
The novel is told from an outsider's perspective, narrated by a character who remains unknown throughout most of the book. It is almost as if the narrator has foretold the story and is reenacting it as theater. This book is not an easy read but it is a fascinating one, one that is thoughtful, wise, and very dark at times. When it let the sun in I suspected that clouds were not far behind.
Eli is the shooter who is struggling with his life, especially since his mother died in a horrible car wreck when he was a boy. He goes to therapy following her death but he doesn't find it helpful. He bottles up his grief and, for the most part, it comes out sideways as he chooses a dark and lonely path for himself and fails to connect with others except in weed intoxicated states. He tries creative writing and then decides to give it up. "This makes you feel better, even though giving up has always felt like a failure. The difference now is that the end is coming, which means the worse things get, the closer you are to reaching the border of your darkness." Eli ruminates about which aspects of his life will be pinpointed as catalysts for his shooting rampage. He wonders why others "are so engaged by this life and convinced that it is saturated with meaning. They don't know that you are waiting for the moment that will unravel everything".
Rose is a young woman attending Ozarkia University. She has suffered great trauma as a child, watching her grandmother die in a tornado and her whole town get destroyed by this horrific act of nature. Rose tries to make sense of her life after this tragedy. She attempts to show others "that she lives in a world where life can get better after an unthinkable loss". She tries to act 'normal', joins a sorority, and participates in their activities. When faced with another trauma, she realizes that 'normal' is not her state of mind, nor her observations of what life is. She is not Miss Pink Faced Sorority Girl. After she meets Scott, a sculptor and survivor of the shooting, she thinks of "trauma taking a physical shape, shadows growing out of sculptures like ectoplasmic specters". What actions will Rose take as she journeys forward? Will she find something inside herself to provide positive life experience or will her trauma empty her and provide her road map for life?
Eddie is a visiting assistant professor of English at Ozarkia whose wife Casey is killed in the shooting. Their marriage has been a vortex, pulling them down a road of misunderstandings and undisguised resentments. However, post-shooting, Eddie "realizes that this year, like all the ones ahead of it, will travel in a circle that leads back to Casey's death". Eddie ruminates about his marriage, the shooting, and even comes up with some conspiracy theories. A counselor gives Eddie wise advice, "that only a fool would run through the rain to escape it". Eddie believes this is true but he is not ready to hear it. Will Eddie be able to move on or is he trapped in his memories forever?
The novel is told from an outsider's perspective, narrated by a character who remains unknown throughout most of the book. It is almost as if the narrator has foretold the story and is reenacting it as theater. This book is not an easy read but it is a fascinating one, one that is thoughtful, wise, and very dark at times. When it let the sun in I suspected that clouds were not far behind.
November 30, 2019
An absolutely masterful reckoning of contemporary America. Innovative in the way it is told, perceptive in its understanding of desperation, grief and anger, and unadorned by cheap gimmickery (I'm looking at you, Shriver), I genuinely cannot think of a better novel about the scourge of school shootings than Bloomland.
November 27, 2019
We love the University life, crave for the freedom it ensures and treat it like the BLOOMLAND of new beginnings, opportunities and bright future. Modern world is often based off on hypocrisy, something that allures us in one way or the other. It is easier to feel disconnected even with everyone sitting in the same room as you. And what exactly blooms the seed of violence in us that synchronizes so well with our primal rage that sometimes we cave in so easily? Can every violence be justified or is there always a way to choose the other way around? John Englehardt's debut novel Bloomland embarks into this brave new genre with undertones dark and foreboding. There is no mercy as the reader is placed right in the said person's pov and made to feel what the person had been going through. No, you are not made to sympathise with the killer, but yes you do get to feel what it is like to be in his place. Eli walks right into the library of the fictional University of Ozarka, when he brings out a SK5 assault rifle and shoots down clueless victims mercilessly. He feels he's in charge and he's finally giving back the pain that had been unleashed on him before. And there's Rose, who herself has had a tragic life, and finds her life altered after this massacre. Finally we see Eddie, who's a professor of this University. He takes the direct blow as he loses his wife Casey in the shooting. Three lives entangled as the society hollers for a way to cope with this unimaginable loss. The world is shrouded with so much doubt and anger that the easiest solution becomes gun power. How can we deal with such a situation? Why is the strangest thing is that everything somehow still comes back to normal? One doesn't seem to understand. Bloomland addresses a deep wound we didn't know existed in the first place, that needs tending to. Readers' Caution Advised.
February 23, 2020
Excellent introspective analysis of the lives of a handful of people affected by a school shooting. Incisive and very very wise.
December 28, 2019
I have read several books that covered school shootings (including two non-fiction ones) but I struggled with this book more than any of them. Don’t get me wrong...it’s written very well. But the second person point of view made me feel really disconnected from the characters and the storyline. I never got invested in any of the characters or their tragedies. I wanted to like this one but it left me cold and indifferent.
February 14, 2023
Nice, succinct book. I don’t think it’s for everyone. It’s very sad and depressing with zero breaks for levity.
September 6, 2019
Thank you so much to Dzanc Books for sending me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
5 ⭐️ Bloomland is a story that will stick with you long after you finish the last page. This story is heavy and will leave you feeling many emotions. It’s brutally honest, especially with what is happening in the world today. The book is told from the standpoint of 3 characters. Alternating back and forth we experience the tragedy in 3 varying POV’s. Each character playing a role in what happened. This will make you take things that are happening in your own life into perspective. This may be a book about a tragedy, but it’s so much more. Words honestly don’t do this book justice. It’s a must read. Bloomland is by far a book that will sit with me for a while. I highly recommend reading this book
5 ⭐️ Bloomland is a story that will stick with you long after you finish the last page. This story is heavy and will leave you feeling many emotions. It’s brutally honest, especially with what is happening in the world today. The book is told from the standpoint of 3 characters. Alternating back and forth we experience the tragedy in 3 varying POV’s. Each character playing a role in what happened. This will make you take things that are happening in your own life into perspective. This may be a book about a tragedy, but it’s so much more. Words honestly don’t do this book justice. It’s a must read. Bloomland is by far a book that will sit with me for a while. I highly recommend reading this book
November 3, 2020
I think most of us would agree that when it comes to storytelling techniques, the second-person POV is among the most dubious, one that reeks of narrative gimmickry and faux-authority.
You open the refrigerator and find the last Coors Light left unopened from Saturday's party hiding behind the almond milk.
No, I'm sitting on my couch reading your book, and I'm not drinking anything. Who are you to presume what I'm doing, Mr. Author? And Coors Light? Who do you think I am?
But of course, when well-deployed, the second-person POV can reap specific rewards for the skilled author, and I'm happy to report that John Englehardt has pulled it off splendidly in his debut novel Bloomland, an elegiac account of a campus shooting and its ripple effects on three people: the shooter himself, the husband of one his victims, and a woman who attends the college but wasn't present during the massacre.
Englehardt intends to interrogate our by-now scripted and benumbed responses to mass shootings -- the empty bromides, the choreographed mourning, the compulsion to attribute easy answers to the unanswerable -- and by using second-person, he slyly implicates us in the trauma; we don't get to enjoy any narrative distance. The effect is claustrophobic at times, and makes his observations land even more indelibly than they would have with a more conventional narration.
There is another narrative conceit here I'm less sold on: the story is told to us by a college professor who has connections to all three principal characters, suggesting that the whole book has been an attempt by the professor to make sense of an insensible tragedy, a la Nathan Zuckerman in Roth's American Pastoral, but the immediacy I felt with the second-person POV was lessened anytime the "I" of the professor crept into the narration.
That's a minor quibble, though. Bloomland is a beautifully-written, anguished book that deserves to be read and reckoned with.
You open the refrigerator and find the last Coors Light left unopened from Saturday's party hiding behind the almond milk.
No, I'm sitting on my couch reading your book, and I'm not drinking anything. Who are you to presume what I'm doing, Mr. Author? And Coors Light? Who do you think I am?
But of course, when well-deployed, the second-person POV can reap specific rewards for the skilled author, and I'm happy to report that John Englehardt has pulled it off splendidly in his debut novel Bloomland, an elegiac account of a campus shooting and its ripple effects on three people: the shooter himself, the husband of one his victims, and a woman who attends the college but wasn't present during the massacre.
Englehardt intends to interrogate our by-now scripted and benumbed responses to mass shootings -- the empty bromides, the choreographed mourning, the compulsion to attribute easy answers to the unanswerable -- and by using second-person, he slyly implicates us in the trauma; we don't get to enjoy any narrative distance. The effect is claustrophobic at times, and makes his observations land even more indelibly than they would have with a more conventional narration.
There is another narrative conceit here I'm less sold on: the story is told to us by a college professor who has connections to all three principal characters, suggesting that the whole book has been an attempt by the professor to make sense of an insensible tragedy, a la Nathan Zuckerman in Roth's American Pastoral, but the immediacy I felt with the second-person POV was lessened anytime the "I" of the professor crept into the narration.
That's a minor quibble, though. Bloomland is a beautifully-written, anguished book that deserves to be read and reckoned with.
September 12, 2019
This novel is intrepid by design, and wonderfully, wonderfully written. It was a bold choice to have a narrator who is always somewhere on the periphery, and I believe the second-person present-tense narration given by said narrator lends the reader the much needed sense of immediacy, given the subject matter. Every page seems to be filled with lines that explode out of the page. Englehardt has written a very important novel, one that I am sure I will revisit often. I can't recommend this book enough.
August 10, 2020
This is an impressive debut novel. Written entirely in the second person by a narrator the reader barely gets to know, with different chapters in different voices: The young man who commits mass murder on a college campus, the husband of one of the victims, and a student who was not a victim or a bystander of the shootings. The strength of the book is the intense internal dialogue and external observations of these diverse characters, as recounted by the mostly faceless narrator. I was especially impressed by the author's ability to dig deep into both the female and male characters. There was not a line I didn't believe. Strong work. I look forward to more of the author's writing. One caveat--if you, as a reader, do not like reading a book in second person, despite the very strong writing, you will probably not like this book.
January 19, 2020
A wholly unexpected book from a wonderful writer. Reminiscent of Faulkner without making me want to tear my hair out. I'm somewhat speechless to clarify the feelings the book has evoked, and very much looking forward to meeting the author this month at a book event.
November 23, 2020
Not an easy read. But also I can't help but think about how beautiful this was? Would not have expected a book that covers such a devastating topic to also deliver such magnificent passages on nostalgia, grief, and love.
December 8, 2019
Unique point of view, well written, and sobering.
December 24, 2019
Unflinching, elegant prose. Some of the perfect sentences nearly knocked me over! A narrative voice that shouldn’t work, yet does. I loved every page of it.
June 19, 2019
*Thank you to the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review*
I’m so happy that a representative from the publishing company reached out to me, because this is typically not the genre of books that I would choose to read, but I absolutely loved it. This is a profound novel that explores several types of loss and how people deal with those losses or how people don’t deal with them. The story is tragic, and the author beautifully describes the aftermath of a healing community. I’d love to read more from this author.
I’m so happy that a representative from the publishing company reached out to me, because this is typically not the genre of books that I would choose to read, but I absolutely loved it. This is a profound novel that explores several types of loss and how people deal with those losses or how people don’t deal with them. The story is tragic, and the author beautifully describes the aftermath of a healing community. I’d love to read more from this author.
September 19, 2019
"Bloomland," winner of the 2018 Dzanc Prize for Fiction, explores a shooting set in an evangelical stronghold where God and guns are spoken of in the same breath and with the same reverence. "Bloomland" serves as a meticulously scaffolded reflection of a society willing to impotently wait for its turn in the crosshairs, chillingly proclaiming, “this is what real endings look like, after anxiety erodes into routine.” That anxiety aside, Bloomland is a field guide for the empathy discarded from the conversation concerning mass shootings.
"Bloomland" resonates as an expertly crafted examination of breathing, bleeding characters including a student struggling to subscribe to their newfound life, a widowed professor, and a listless man yearning to fill an emptiness at any cost. The cost is interrogated by a chorus of second-person narrators through descriptive, prescriptive, and speculative happenings surrounding said fatal day, reminding readers an “I” exists behind the tragedy while untangling their knotted lives.
Lastly, "Bloomland" asks the question of who are “we” to sit back as apathetic audience members to history’s most grotesque spectator sport, forcing one to “...wonder if the scariest thing about all this is not that life can’t return to normal, but that it already has.”
"Bloomland" resonates as an expertly crafted examination of breathing, bleeding characters including a student struggling to subscribe to their newfound life, a widowed professor, and a listless man yearning to fill an emptiness at any cost. The cost is interrogated by a chorus of second-person narrators through descriptive, prescriptive, and speculative happenings surrounding said fatal day, reminding readers an “I” exists behind the tragedy while untangling their knotted lives.
Lastly, "Bloomland" asks the question of who are “we” to sit back as apathetic audience members to history’s most grotesque spectator sport, forcing one to “...wonder if the scariest thing about all this is not that life can’t return to normal, but that it already has.”
March 26, 2019
I received this book through Edelweiss+ in exchange for my honest review.
Bloomland is a moving, dark and beautiful journey inside a tragic school shooting and the rippling effects it has on three people - one indirectly affected (Rose), one directly affected (Eddie), and the shooter itself (Eli). That in itself made this story entirely unique. It is told in second-person POV, which helps transport you into the story, drawing you in by making you feel like you’re involved and living amongst these characters. It has vivid descriptions with an almost poetic fluidity in its storytelling, which despite the content and subject of the story, make it a strangely calming reading experience.
Initially, the story is narrated by a character we don’t directly meet and are only given a few clues about, but none the less, are totally intrigued by because we want to know whose mind we're in. When we make the connections and find out who it is, it's almost like we're walking in their shoes, putting together the connections and pieces between the three main characters.
Bloomland is heavy....so heavy. It stays with you for a while after reading the last sentence. It’s dark and gripping and doesn’t make you feel good but you want to keep turning the pages because you’re invested and captivated by Rose, Eddie and yes, even Eli. I couldn't put it down. It definitely provides some insight into the horrors and rippling effects these tragedies have on people. Reading about the shooter, his thought process, life, and problems were especially jarring. However, we also encounter the lives and thoughts of the other characters and gain some insight on grief and the different ways they experienced, lived and showed it.
I haven't read a book narrated in second-person in quite some time, so this was seemingly a new and fresh experience for me. I appreciated the unique experience and really felt like I was connected to both narrator and pro/antagonists.
Right now, we're in a horrific time in history where school shootings (and shootings in general, really) have almost become just a blip on our radar because they happen so often. Typically, the general public who are not directly affected by them move on after being horrified, saddened and mourning for people we don’t know for a few weeks/months. But recent news surfacing of teenagers and parents committing suicide over survivors guilt and depression made me want to pick up this book immediately.
See my full review on The Reading Conspiracy: www.thereadingconspiracy.com
Instagram | Twitter
Bloomland is a moving, dark and beautiful journey inside a tragic school shooting and the rippling effects it has on three people - one indirectly affected (Rose), one directly affected (Eddie), and the shooter itself (Eli). That in itself made this story entirely unique. It is told in second-person POV, which helps transport you into the story, drawing you in by making you feel like you’re involved and living amongst these characters. It has vivid descriptions with an almost poetic fluidity in its storytelling, which despite the content and subject of the story, make it a strangely calming reading experience.
Initially, the story is narrated by a character we don’t directly meet and are only given a few clues about, but none the less, are totally intrigued by because we want to know whose mind we're in. When we make the connections and find out who it is, it's almost like we're walking in their shoes, putting together the connections and pieces between the three main characters.
Bloomland is heavy....so heavy. It stays with you for a while after reading the last sentence. It’s dark and gripping and doesn’t make you feel good but you want to keep turning the pages because you’re invested and captivated by Rose, Eddie and yes, even Eli. I couldn't put it down. It definitely provides some insight into the horrors and rippling effects these tragedies have on people. Reading about the shooter, his thought process, life, and problems were especially jarring. However, we also encounter the lives and thoughts of the other characters and gain some insight on grief and the different ways they experienced, lived and showed it.
I haven't read a book narrated in second-person in quite some time, so this was seemingly a new and fresh experience for me. I appreciated the unique experience and really felt like I was connected to both narrator and pro/antagonists.
Right now, we're in a horrific time in history where school shootings (and shootings in general, really) have almost become just a blip on our radar because they happen so often. Typically, the general public who are not directly affected by them move on after being horrified, saddened and mourning for people we don’t know for a few weeks/months. But recent news surfacing of teenagers and parents committing suicide over survivors guilt and depression made me want to pick up this book immediately.
See my full review on The Reading Conspiracy: www.thereadingconspiracy.com
Instagram | Twitter
July 21, 2019
Hate has this way of refusing to accumulate more knowledge.
Bloomland follows the events leading up to, surrounding, and following the horrific shooting at a fictional university. Told from a second person POV, you experience this devastating story through three different characters: a student, a professor, and the shooter himself. It is an incredibly moving, heartbreaking story. I haven't tabbed and highlighted a book this much in quite a while. I was genuinely surprised by how much this book got to me. There was one line that hit me like a wall, and I clutched the book to my chest in sort of a daze over how beautiful and heavy it all way.
I love stories that are told from the second person. I feel like this is hard for a writer to do well because it's such a delicate balance, but Englehardt had me hooked immediately. I felt like I was there, experiencing everything through Rose's, Eddie's, and even Eli's eyes. And Englehardt is clearly such a talented writer, that he had me empathizing for Eli. Eli loses his mother at a young age that eventually grows to become someone that would murder numerous people without a second thought. It's so richly textured and executed flawlessly, with characters you know Englehardt loves dearly. I really hope to read more from him in the future.
I urge everyone to read this book as soon as they can. This book is a lifelike, heavy, emotional draining, but such a beautifully written, experience. I knew from the very first few pages I would give it 5 stars. I didn't know I needed it in my life, and I'm so glad to offer this excellent book a home on my shelves.
A huge thank you to Dzanc Books for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review. It was such a great experience.
July 14, 2019
At its best, fiction can help us make sense of our world. In Bloomland, John Englehardt trains the novelist's eye on that seemingly ubiquitous feature of modern life, the mass shooting.
Other writers have tackled this difficult topic. Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin was a haunting portrait of an unraveling family. In How to Be Safe, Tom McAllister saw an opportunity for a darkly comic look at an unraveling society.
Englehardt's book follows three characters at a fictional university in Arkansas. One is directly affected by an attack at the school's library. One is a student who – although she wasn't present for the shooting – finds it changes her life. The third is the shooter.
The author treats all of his characters with care, exploring the ways that grief unpredictably alters the course of a life, much the way water flows around an obstacle.
The novel alternates points of view, featuring an unidentified (for most of the book) narrator. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the narrator's identity only to discover it ultimately was unimportant. That bit of distraction is the only thing that kept me from giving this profoundly moving novel five stars.
*Note: I received an advance review copy of this book.
Other writers have tackled this difficult topic. Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin was a haunting portrait of an unraveling family. In How to Be Safe, Tom McAllister saw an opportunity for a darkly comic look at an unraveling society.
Englehardt's book follows three characters at a fictional university in Arkansas. One is directly affected by an attack at the school's library. One is a student who – although she wasn't present for the shooting – finds it changes her life. The third is the shooter.
The author treats all of his characters with care, exploring the ways that grief unpredictably alters the course of a life, much the way water flows around an obstacle.
The novel alternates points of view, featuring an unidentified (for most of the book) narrator. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the narrator's identity only to discover it ultimately was unimportant. That bit of distraction is the only thing that kept me from giving this profoundly moving novel five stars.
*Note: I received an advance review copy of this book.
January 7, 2020
Bloomland captures and expresses the disbelief and subsequent disassociation created by trauma. It asks that the reader experience those feelings and does so viscerally without ever being cruel. The second person narration made me pause and think about what if a friend, a teacher, another member of the community could honestly and wholly see and feel the grief of those around them. What would it feel like to have someone give words to the simultaneously distant and unspeakably close feelings after a traumatic experience? I think Englehardt's expressions of grief in Bloomland are as close to that as many of us will come.
This novel also touches on other ways thoughts and language are handed to and ingrained in people. At the center of this story is a murder and a school shooting that leads to the deaths of 11 others. Eli, the perpetrator, makes his way to extreme violence slowly and then all at once. It starts with negative self talk, is escalated by a friend's radicalism, and is pushed by the obsessive coverage of violent offenders by the media. Eli feels he is nothing and believes he sees a way to be something, something big. Englehardt thoughtfully brought me there with Eli without skewing compassion away from victims.
As an individual who is grieving Bloomland made me feel close to something. It's surely as close as I'll get to having my own omniscient narrator/friend.
This novel also touches on other ways thoughts and language are handed to and ingrained in people. At the center of this story is a murder and a school shooting that leads to the deaths of 11 others. Eli, the perpetrator, makes his way to extreme violence slowly and then all at once. It starts with negative self talk, is escalated by a friend's radicalism, and is pushed by the obsessive coverage of violent offenders by the media. Eli feels he is nothing and believes he sees a way to be something, something big. Englehardt thoughtfully brought me there with Eli without skewing compassion away from victims.
As an individual who is grieving Bloomland made me feel close to something. It's surely as close as I'll get to having my own omniscient narrator/friend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2019
"Bloomland opens during finals week at a fictional southern university, when a student walks into the library with his roommate’s semi-automatic rifle and opens fire. When he stops shooting, twelve people are dead.
In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor. As the community wrestles with the fallout, Bloomland interrogates social and cultural dysfunction in a nation where mass violence has become all too familiar."
Author: John Englehardt
Genre: Southern Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
The book would be out on Sept. 2019! Get your eyes peeled out for it.
The publisher sent me an arc in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. In no ways my views of this book affected by this.
When I was first approached by this book, I was immediately interested because it was introduced that it's about a school shooting and that it would be great for those who enjoyed 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' It immediately sparked my interest, I haven't read a book besides 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' that tackles a school shooting.
First of all, it's only 200 pages. I could read it in a day but it took me a while because of the writing style. I'm not used to reading in 2nd Person (Instead of 'I' it's 'You') and at first I thought it was only going to be on the first chapter but it actually continued on for the rest of the book.
The book is also mostly narrated. Instead of being there even with a 2nd person POV, it's hard to connect with the characters because the events are mostly described than shown and acted.
I understand that part though. This book tackles the events before, after and during the shooting. But there's minimal dialogue, it's all mostly thought and described.
This book tackles a school shooting, so there should be actions where you're at ease, you're uncomfortable and just plainly feeling it. When it comes to connecting with the readers, I don't think it made it's point.
Emotionally, this book is pretty stale. Yes, it did made my feelings heavy reading about it but it won't stuck with you for a long time. And for the theme of this book, it should.
With that being said, there are a few stuff I admire about this book.
I love that it has POVs of multiple people who were affected and not just the victims and suspect. It didn't also just tackle the moment it happened and after it. From a few that I read, when it comes to this type of topics, it's mostly touched the during and after events. So it's pretty good that we could see the changes that happened to the characters.
All in all, I think everyone should have a taste with this book. It would disturb you while reading it knowing how everything would unfold. It's not going to be for all, but it is a book everyone should at least read a few pages of to know what's going on.
"So maybe it's not about hedonistic partying or chemically hijacked brains. It's about isolation. It's about the life you have been given. Are you in a good cage, or a bad one?"
In this richly textured debut, John Englehardt explores how the origin and aftermath of the shooting impacts the lives of three characters: a disillusioned student, a grieving professor, and a young man whose valuation of fear and disconnection funnels him into the role of the aggressor. As the community wrestles with the fallout, Bloomland interrogates social and cultural dysfunction in a nation where mass violence has become all too familiar."
Author: John Englehardt
Genre: Southern Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
The book would be out on Sept. 2019! Get your eyes peeled out for it.
The publisher sent me an arc in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. In no ways my views of this book affected by this.
When I was first approached by this book, I was immediately interested because it was introduced that it's about a school shooting and that it would be great for those who enjoyed 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' It immediately sparked my interest, I haven't read a book besides 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' that tackles a school shooting.
First of all, it's only 200 pages. I could read it in a day but it took me a while because of the writing style. I'm not used to reading in 2nd Person (Instead of 'I' it's 'You') and at first I thought it was only going to be on the first chapter but it actually continued on for the rest of the book.
The book is also mostly narrated. Instead of being there even with a 2nd person POV, it's hard to connect with the characters because the events are mostly described than shown and acted.
I understand that part though. This book tackles the events before, after and during the shooting. But there's minimal dialogue, it's all mostly thought and described.
This book tackles a school shooting, so there should be actions where you're at ease, you're uncomfortable and just plainly feeling it. When it comes to connecting with the readers, I don't think it made it's point.
Emotionally, this book is pretty stale. Yes, it did made my feelings heavy reading about it but it won't stuck with you for a long time. And for the theme of this book, it should.
With that being said, there are a few stuff I admire about this book.
I love that it has POVs of multiple people who were affected and not just the victims and suspect. It didn't also just tackle the moment it happened and after it. From a few that I read, when it comes to this type of topics, it's mostly touched the during and after events. So it's pretty good that we could see the changes that happened to the characters.
All in all, I think everyone should have a taste with this book. It would disturb you while reading it knowing how everything would unfold. It's not going to be for all, but it is a book everyone should at least read a few pages of to know what's going on.
"So maybe it's not about hedonistic partying or chemically hijacked brains. It's about isolation. It's about the life you have been given. Are you in a good cage, or a bad one?"
September 1, 2025
Note: I received a free paperback (coming out Aug 2026) copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I cringe when I begin reading a novel or short story set at a university. Does the writer have no imagination beyond the environs where an MFA or English degree was earned, I wonder? But Bloomland quickly set itself apart. I agree with this snippet from a review quote on the cover: This novel is “insanely brave.”
Writing about a mass school shooting (this one at a university in a state which typically ranks at the bottom of most well-being metrics) without a trigger warning is brave today (though shouldn’t be). Writing in second person POV is also brave. I happen to love it. If that’s not enough, writing from the perspectives of the three main characters (a professor of writing at the university, a student of said professor, and the shooter, who also was in the professor’s class) and alternating them chapter to chapter risks confusing your audience, but Englehardt pulls it off expertly.
Bloomland portrays the collateral damage inflicted on those with direct and not so direct connections to the horrific event, but with profound empathy and a deep search for some understanding, rationale or even meaning for all involved, including the shooter. To do so, the author has put all of contemporary American culture, politics, and economics, the American system if you will, under a microscope. That system is a support structure on which tendrils of violence and trauma cling while the underlying vine just grows and grows with inequities and cruelties, subtle and overt. Bloomland gets you beyond the banality to this kind of evil, especially as mass shootings are normalized and any collective response or solution (which aren’t thoughts and prayers anyway) is immediately squelched by the same system that fosters the violence in the first place.
While the topic is plenty disturbing, the elegance of the prose helps you through it. I found no rookie mistakes in this debut novel. I often judge a book by how much highlighting I've done, and I did plenty in Bloomland. It's a traumatic subject but Englehardt handles it with the care of a surgeon stitching up the victims. I hope the paperback edition will be bring more readers to this necessary novel.
I cringe when I begin reading a novel or short story set at a university. Does the writer have no imagination beyond the environs where an MFA or English degree was earned, I wonder? But Bloomland quickly set itself apart. I agree with this snippet from a review quote on the cover: This novel is “insanely brave.”
Writing about a mass school shooting (this one at a university in a state which typically ranks at the bottom of most well-being metrics) without a trigger warning is brave today (though shouldn’t be). Writing in second person POV is also brave. I happen to love it. If that’s not enough, writing from the perspectives of the three main characters (a professor of writing at the university, a student of said professor, and the shooter, who also was in the professor’s class) and alternating them chapter to chapter risks confusing your audience, but Englehardt pulls it off expertly.
Bloomland portrays the collateral damage inflicted on those with direct and not so direct connections to the horrific event, but with profound empathy and a deep search for some understanding, rationale or even meaning for all involved, including the shooter. To do so, the author has put all of contemporary American culture, politics, and economics, the American system if you will, under a microscope. That system is a support structure on which tendrils of violence and trauma cling while the underlying vine just grows and grows with inequities and cruelties, subtle and overt. Bloomland gets you beyond the banality to this kind of evil, especially as mass shootings are normalized and any collective response or solution (which aren’t thoughts and prayers anyway) is immediately squelched by the same system that fosters the violence in the first place.
While the topic is plenty disturbing, the elegance of the prose helps you through it. I found no rookie mistakes in this debut novel. I often judge a book by how much highlighting I've done, and I did plenty in Bloomland. It's a traumatic subject but Englehardt handles it with the care of a surgeon stitching up the victims. I hope the paperback edition will be bring more readers to this necessary novel.
September 7, 2019
‘But everyone has heard this story before, which means it only changes the world for a moment, the same way the snow falling at night can be gone in the morning.’
A mass shooting on a university campus leaves 12 people dead. A community profoundly altered. An unimaginable grief. John Englehardt’s debut novel is a quiet, reflective piece that shifts perspective between three characters caught up in the events: Rose, a student on campus; Eddie, whose wife Casey is one of those killed; and Eli, the shooter, another student at the university. Moving back and forward in time the narrative gives each of the character’s points of view, but from a second-person narrative voice. This is the fourth main character, if you like, although we learn little about the speaker, a university professor called Dr Bressinger who is somehow linked to all three of the other main characters.
We are, sadly, all to familiar with these types of mass shooting in America, so what does Englehardt bring that is new to this novel? Well, perhaps nothing surprising, but it is a sensitive piece of writing that brings out the personal stories of those caught up in the killings. We are never encouraged to feel sympathy for Eli, but we do come to understand him and his actions. It seems like a typical story: a loner, dabbling in drugs, playing violent video games. But these are the newspaper headlines, the howls of protest from a society that will care about the tragedy for a few days and then move on to something else. It is the individuals involved who have to live with the effects every day, and the book spends time on the trial and sentencing of Eli as it, and Eddie, seek some sort of closure.
This is a beautifully written meditation on grief, on loneliness, on faith; it is a subtle exploration of how we try to make sense of a senseless act, of how we can manage to continue to find beauty in a world so full of anger. And it is a profoundly human novel, whose characters are at the heart of everything. The narrative style works here, as there is an immediate connection with the characters and the figure of Dr Bressinger. An understated piece of writing, this fully deserves to be read. 4 stars.
A mass shooting on a university campus leaves 12 people dead. A community profoundly altered. An unimaginable grief. John Englehardt’s debut novel is a quiet, reflective piece that shifts perspective between three characters caught up in the events: Rose, a student on campus; Eddie, whose wife Casey is one of those killed; and Eli, the shooter, another student at the university. Moving back and forward in time the narrative gives each of the character’s points of view, but from a second-person narrative voice. This is the fourth main character, if you like, although we learn little about the speaker, a university professor called Dr Bressinger who is somehow linked to all three of the other main characters.
We are, sadly, all to familiar with these types of mass shooting in America, so what does Englehardt bring that is new to this novel? Well, perhaps nothing surprising, but it is a sensitive piece of writing that brings out the personal stories of those caught up in the killings. We are never encouraged to feel sympathy for Eli, but we do come to understand him and his actions. It seems like a typical story: a loner, dabbling in drugs, playing violent video games. But these are the newspaper headlines, the howls of protest from a society that will care about the tragedy for a few days and then move on to something else. It is the individuals involved who have to live with the effects every day, and the book spends time on the trial and sentencing of Eli as it, and Eddie, seek some sort of closure.
This is a beautifully written meditation on grief, on loneliness, on faith; it is a subtle exploration of how we try to make sense of a senseless act, of how we can manage to continue to find beauty in a world so full of anger. And it is a profoundly human novel, whose characters are at the heart of everything. The narrative style works here, as there is an immediate connection with the characters and the figure of Dr Bressinger. An understated piece of writing, this fully deserves to be read. 4 stars.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews