A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

A stunning debut novel that unravels the hidden story behind a school shooting

It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May- the only woman in her high-testosterone office in the Criminal Investigations Department-begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges, calling into question the innocence of others. But no one, including Lucia's boss, is interested.

As the pressure to close the case builds and her colleagues' sexism takes a sinister turn, Lucia begins to realize that she has more in common with the killer than she could have imagined, and she becomes deter­mined to expose the truth. Brilliantly interweaving the witnesses' accounts with Lucia's own perspective, A Thousand Cuts is a narrative tour de force from a formidable new voice in fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Contemporary, Mystery Thriller, School

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2009

About the author

Simon Lelic was born in 1976 and has worked as a journalist in the UK and currently runs his own business in Brighton, England, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Review originally published June 2011.) I literally read Rupture in one sitting: decided to start it at a quarter to midnight because I couldn't sleep, and finally turned the light off at 3am after turning the last page. So I don't need to point out that it's compelling. Ostensibly, this is a crime novel; the story of a man called Samuel Szajkowski, a young history teacher who one day carries a gun into his school and kills three pupils and a fellow teacher before shooting himself. It's also the story of Lucia May, the police inspector assigned to the case, who - unlike everyone else around her - doesn't see the shooting as an open-and-shut case, and increasingly comes to believe that it could have been prevented. The narrative takes the form of a series of witness statements, told exactly as they are related (dialect, slang, swearing and all) rather than as conversations, alternated with third-person chapters observing Lucia's efforts to uncover the truth.

What the book is really about - for me, at least - is bullying. This is a constant, very strong, theme running throughout the story. As Lucia investigates, she discovers that Samuel was the victim of merciless bullying by his pupils. She also takes an interest in the case of Elliot, a boy tormented so severely he is hospitalised and later commits suicide. Donovan - the ringleader of the persecution of both Samuel and Elliot, and one of the pupils Samuel murders - at first appears to be an almost demonically horrible figure, but through the witness statements, Lelic subtly shows us Donovan's awful background and miserable family life, and how his father is also a bully. Meanwhile, the experience of the students and Samuel is mirrored in the treatment Lucia herself suffers at the hands of a horrendously misogynistic colleague, Walter. The unifying theme of all these experiences is negligence, lack of action by those in the best position to take it. The school, personified by bullish headmaster Travis, dismisses the bullying and sweeps Elliot's injuries under the carpet; some of the teachers, particularly oafish PE teacher TJ (the kind of man who imagines the pupils see him as 'one of the lads') join in the mocking of Samuel; Lucia is offered no support at work and is taken off the case when she fails to conform to the viewpoint expected of her. As Lucia pieces together the circumstances that led to Samuel's attack and Elliot's suicide, she starts to see exactly how much those in authority are accountable for the victims' suffering.

This book struck a particular chord with me because I too was bullied at a school that turned a blind eye and prioritised its reputation and image over the obvious suffering of some of its pupils. A number of other reviewers have argued that the extent of the bullying is unrealistic, that nobody would get away with this behaviour; in my opinion, it's all too believable. Lelic does a fantastic job of highlighting how powerless the victims find themselves and how routinely they are let down. Samuel tries to speak out and ask for help on numerous occasions, only to be ridiculed by a headmaster who dismisses the very idea that an adult could be intimidated by teenagers. When things come to a head for Lucia, as she reads the text messages that drove Elliot to kill himself, the conclusions she has drawn from what she's seen - and the message of the book - are crystallised in a particularly striking passage:

More than alone, Elliot had been forsaken. Why should he have had to ask for help? Why had help not been forthcoming? It was no secret, after all. Those who had the power to intervene: they knew. Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong who had liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had licence to behave like such cowards?

The book isn't perfect. I disliked the chapter that consisted almost entirely of dialogue between Lucia and her arrogant, sleazy ex-boyfriend, Philip, who seemed to me a very misjudged character (if I'm right in assuming he was supposed to be likeable). Walter was so unremittingly horrible that he sometimes felt like a caricature. There were moments of awkwardness and underdevelopment, though there were some outstanding passages (see above) and the witness statements worked well and felt authentic - not an easy feat with so many individual voices to create. Overall, this is much more than a generic crime novel. It's an extremely powerful story which makes you think and asks difficult questions - some, perhaps, impossible to answer. The method of its delivery is both original and effective. I picked this up after reading good reviews, half-expecting it to be dull because I'm not a great fan of police procedurals. If you're the same, I urge you to seek it out - you will enjoy this book more than you'd expect - and if you're into crime fiction, it should go on your must-read list.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I own this book and I have read it twice over the last two years. The description of the book says it is about a school shooting, but believe me it is about much more. I have never seen a book or any other medium do such a good job showing how widespread bullying is in Western culture; the book not only shows that bullying is widespread but it shows that bullying is accepted and expected because being strong and being able to take care of yourself is part of growing up; and part of growing up is learning how to fight back and stand up and take care of yourself; almost like bullies are a good thing and a vital part of society. That mantra seems to be the Western belief. "Don't be a baby. Stop whining. The same thing happened to me when I was a kid. I got over it."

Anyway, back to the book. The author brilliantly has all the important characters being bullied in the story, right down to the cop working the case. He shows bullying in the workplace as well as in the schoolyard. He shows bullying among parents. He shows it all over and each character deals with the bullying a bit differently and ends up with a different situation at the end.

A Thousand Cuts. You begin to see how pervasive it all is. This is a great book to read. The characters are realistic (you will recognize people you have met and you will remember situations you have been in) and the plot and story are compelling.

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even with disturbing tales of student suicides evoked by ruthless bullying screaming from recent headlines, few of us are willing to delve into the unremarkable daily tortures behind the spectacle. Lelic brings the issue of bullying—in the school and in workplace, by children and adults—home with his unsettling, penetrating debut novel. Through his protagonist, police investigator Lucia, he asks, “Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong who had a liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had license to behave like such cowards?” His characters are unremarkable and average—which makes their inaction, their cruelty, all the more chilling. Through cutting prose, he masterfully evokes the gut-wrenching betrayal that bullying victims feel when their cries for help go unanswered, and authority tacitly endorse, or even encourage, unspeakable barbarism. A Thousand Cuts leaves you with the disquieting question: what do we cause when we scorn the weak and plea ignorance in the face of cruelty?

[Lucille · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story about a school shooting done by a teacher, an intriguing premise. The shooting has already happened as the book opens, and we learn about the players and events through the police investigation of the crime. The author uses an interesting format: interviews by the police of witnesses told in monologue form, and then a narrative form to advance the story. The monologue form used in the book was so gripping, powerful and often chilling, that the narrative form fell flat in contrast. We learn that bullying of both student on student, and student on teacher, was rampant and vicious and made moreso by a school administrator who, with full knowledge, allowed it to happen. As an example: A teacher playing goalie in a soccer game between students and teachers is first publically humiliated by having his pants pulled down by two students on the playing field, and is then deliberately fouled during gameplay by the same two students with a tackle that breaks his leg. And yet the principal does nothing to censure the student/culprits, and instead takes issue with the teacher/victim.

There is a parallel storyline involving the investigating police detective, a female, being ‘bullied’ (more accurately an aggressive sexual harassment) by her fellow male detectives that I felt was an unnecessary distraction from the main storyline of the school shootting, and thereby detracted from that. Because once again, it is hinted that the police department head is cognizant and somewhat complacent about these interactions of his officers. And then the cherry on top: The female detective is ultimately given enforced leave for her aggressive investigation of the school, students, and administration, while her fellow detectives remain uncensured.

It just felt very heavy-handed, needlessly so.

[Sharon Bolton · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's been a lot of hype about Simon Lelic lately, especially on social networking sites. Personally, I hate it when authors just don't live up to the hype; but I hate it a whole lot more when they do! Rupture, I have to admit, is truly excellent.

A London school is reeling in the aftermath of a savage act of violence. Apparently without warning, the history teacher walked into school assembly, shot three pupils and a teacher, before turning the gun on himself. For the school authorities and the police it's an open and shut case; the teacher had problems, it was a terrible tragedy that couldn't have been foreseen. Just one young, female detective inspector is determined to look further, to find out why the teacher behaved in the way he did, and whether the person to blame for the deaths might not be the man who pulled the trigger.

Rupture is beautifully written, alternating from the DI's point of view, with the statements of various witnesses. The language is immediate and striking, with each new chapter coming as a fresh surprise. The characters are excellently drawn with some real nasties but Lelic's greatest achievement, to my mind, was presenting the "villain" as a sympathetic character from the very beginning.

I gave four stars rather than five because, to my mind, there were a few unanswered questions at the end, and some of the scenes of sexual harassment felt a little overdone. Also, this type of psychological thriller isn't really my thing. But if it's yours, I thoroughly recommend Rupture and I will definitely be reading Lelic's other books.

[Marion Moffatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book club choice. Slow going mainly because of the pedestrian monologues. Good to read for how not to structure a book I think. The detective pov is good but is interrupted all the time by the monologues which slow the pace too much.
Finished it now.

Didn't like the structure. There are a lot of narrative voices due to the device of using transcripts of tape recordings. It is very difficult for the writer to give a unique voice to each one so they blur.
The sexism encountered by Lucia was a bit stereotypical - Walter could have stepped out of A Life on Mars!
And we were rather beaten over the head by the theme of the book. IT'S ABOUT BULLYING - seemed to be shouted at me constantly. Quite frankly I wanted to smack Lucia - I don't think that was the reaction the author was looking for!

But I still sort of enjoyed it - it's not one to avoid but not one to recommend either.

[Laura Wonderchick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a different style for a crime novel. A serious story of bullying & all the effects it has in a major trickle down. Although some say these ideas were too exaggerated or maybe even unrealistic they certainly helped drive the point home for me. I’ve read numerous books on school shootings & they’ve all stuck with me long after finishing. I’m a huge fan of SL & this did not disappoint.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl, Shipbreaker, The Drowned Cities) blows me away; when he commented on Twitter he was reading someone named Simon Lelic I made a beeline for the library. And by great good luck my local had a copy of A Thousand Cuts, Lelic's debut novel.

Ostensibly this is a murder mystery about a British police inspector investigating a school shooting. The shooter, a first-year teacher, fired upon students and faculty at an assembly, killing three students, a colleague, and then himself. Much of the story unfolds through witness statements collected by the inspector, but as she gets more involved with the case some of the chapters describe her working and personal life.

Very quickly, I realized this was a story about bullying. It is endemic at the school and ignored ... no, tolerated, even encouraged ... by the headmaster. The new teacher, the man who finally snapped, was the subject of particularly brutal bullying, unable to stand up to it, and unable to get anyone to take action against the bullies, student or faculty. What initially appears to be an open and shut case suddenly appears less so when it emerges that a bullied student had been brutally attacked, and part of his face cut off with a knife, just a few days before the shooting. The inspector tries to get at the bottom of the sickness infecting the school, but her superiors just want her to go away. As we get into the personal and working life of the inspector, we learn that she herself is the frequent target of a male colleague's bullying.

It is Simon Lelic's gift to be able to show readers how intimidating and awful sustained bullying can be, how it can rob life of all pleasure and inspire a daily sense of dread in adult and child victims alike. I count myself lucky I haven't encountered much of this sort of thing in my life; Lelic is convincing enough that I now believe I understand why some victims of bullying commit suicide.

I'm not just impressed with Lelic's story. I'm impressed with his writing. Those witness statements I alluded to earlier rival the best of Elmore Leonard's inspired dialog. Lelic has a great ear. I had the hardest time putting this book down for even the most urgent breaks; I would literally take it to the bathroom with me. I skipped meals in order to keep reading.

In short, A Thousand Cuts is gobsmackingly good. Simon Lelic joins Paolo Bacigalupi and David Mitchell on my short list of buy-everything-they-write authors.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

A THOUSAND CUTS by Simon Lelic is not what many of its reviews claimed in 2010 and 11.

Booklist says in its starred review, "Lelic wastes not a word in this searing indictment of a culture inured to cruelty."

But that is not true. In every witness account of what led to and the day of a mass shooting, pages and pages of this book are nothing but wasted words that had nothing to do with anyone or anything that mattered to the story.

Neither is this book "fast paced," as a "Most Helpful Customer Review" on amazon.com calls it. To the contrary, it is excessively wordy in its witness accounts mentioned above. But it is not fast paced mostly because all the accounts of bullying and descriptions of sexual harassment lead to nothing.

Not a single character in this book is believable, and most seem exaggerated. Bullying and sexual harassment are real problems that need no exaggeration.

This is an honest reader review.

[Ruthy lavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this book was a slow burner because it took me 3 days to read (which is unusual) that was purely because it’s the summer holidays and my 5 boys were constantly distracting me.
I was thoroughly enjoying the story, the style of writing, the witty one liners, and the very important hidden meaning to this story, it could easily have achieved a 5 star rating - had the ending not been so disappointing. It sort of just came, without warning, almost mid chapter, and left me reeling.
That is always so annoying!
Alas I can only award this book 3 stars, but it hasn’t put me off Simon Lelic’s work, I do believe he’s very talented and I do believe that although this book was written some 8 years or so ago, it’s a very current subject and something which is brushed under the carpet all too often. I just wish he had spent longer on giving it a more conclusive and satisfactory ending.

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why would a teacher walk into an assembly at his school carrying a gun, and open fire? That’s the central question examined in Simon Lelic’s first novel, Rupture. Detective Inspector Lucia May of the Metropolitan Police has been heading the investigation into the shooting perpetrated by Samuel Szajkowski, an apparently nondescript young history teacher. Her superiors would like to think it’s an open-and-shut case, but Lucia’s investigations have painted a picture of Samuel as a man who was out of his depth, bullied by colleagues and pupils alike, and desperately looking for (and failing to find) somewhere to turn. Is it time for Lucia to stand up and declare the teacher as much a ‘victim’ as any of those he killed, even if doing so would threaten her own livelihood?

Lelic has chosen a distinctive structure for his novel, alternating first-person interview transcripts with third-person accounts of Lucia’s travails in the book’s present. What’s more, each of the interviews is with a different character. It’s a tricky feat to juggle all this, but Lelic pulls it off: his interviewees’ voices are all distinctive, and the narrative voice of the third-person chapters is different again.

The author also makes some nicely subtle observations of his characters; it’s often the incidental asides which are particularly revealing. For example, here’s Mr Travis, the school’s headteacher, talking to Lucia and showing just how dismissive he is:

You would not have attended university, I assume?

Well, I stand corrected. And what, pray tell, did you read? No, don’t tell me. It is clear from your expression. [NB. Travis has just rubbished the teaching of history.:] And in a way, my dear, you are a case in point. Where has your history degree got you if not further back than where you began? You are, how old? Thirty.

Thirty-two, then. If you had joined the police force when you were sixteen you might be a chief inspector by now. Superintendent.

It’s not just Travis’s assumption that Lucia didn’t go to university which turns one against him, but also his patronising suggestion that she might have been better off without her education, and the implication that to have attained the rank of DI by the age of 32 is not in itself a mark of success. Smartly written, I think.

Lelic is a perceptive writer in other ways, too: with quite considerable economy, he shows how some of the pupils have been moulded by their circumstances, and how Lucia feels adrift now that she’s no longer one of ‘the younger generation’, even though she’s still far from old. And the author is good with description, as when he depicts Lucia’s impersonal flat (‘the box that she still could not think of as home’), whose unwelcoming atmosphere reflects her own sense of uncertainty.

One of the striking things about Lelic’s characterisation is that we don’t learn much more than the bare bones of Lucia’s life outside the immediate sphere of the tale, and even less about her work colleagues’. This can make some characters seem rather two-dimensional (so, for example, the defining characteristics of Lucia’s fellow-detective Walter are his sexism and lechery); but Lelic would seem too skilled a writer in other areas for this not to be deliberate. What I think he’s trying to do is make us meet Lucia on the same terms as she meets people in her working life – that is, she has to make judgements about people based on relatively brief impressions. This would fit in with the parallels Lelic is apparently trying to draw between Samuel and Lucia (e.g. both are bullied, and both frustrated by the lack of support at work). As I say, I don’t think the strategy entirely succeeds; but it does help tighten the focus of the novel, which is quite effective.

But the thing that niggles me most about Rupture is that, even though the novel deals with a complex moral problem, I think Lelic makes it all a bit too easy for us to decide what’s right -- too easy to decide that Samuel was not a monster, but a fundamentally decent man who was treated appallingly until he snapped, with tragic consequences; too easy to side with Lucia, because the characters with opposing opinions are so loathsome. I can’t help feeling that Lelic undermines his novel somewhat by beginning with the suggestion that matters were not as straightforward as they appeared, then offering an alternative view that’s so morally clear-cut.

Rupture is a novel that works on several levels. Though not primarily intended as a detection, it serves as one well enough (we duly discover at the end that there was more going on than had met the eye up to that point). Mainly, though, it’s a pretty successful character study and examination of how institutions might fail people whom they have a duty to help. Despite its flaws, Rupture is a fine debut, and I look forward to following Lelic’s writing career in the future.

[Eugénie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75⭐
Het was wel leuk, zeker voor en boek voor school te zijn. Ik las nooit echt met tegenzin dus echt wel aangenaam om lezen. Al had ik wel iets meer verwacht van het einde.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The newish, oddball teacher at a London school enters morning assembly one day and opens fire with an old army revolver, killing three of the kids, another teacher and finally himself. The investigation of this horrific case is put into the hands of DI Lucia May, who discovers that vicious bullying is endemic in the school, that it's being perpetrated not just by but upon teachers as well as pupils, and that the headmaster, Travis, is content to let the pattern continue at least for the present, because exposing the situation could adversely affect the school's consideration for an upgraded status -- a status that could bring a lot of money to various financially and politically powerful figures.

May faces bullying within her own department, too, because she's a woman. Her boss, like Travis, is disposed to ignore this -- and if anything to blame the victim; after all, before May arrived everyone got along together really well, didn't they? Well, except for the intelligent one, but . . . Worse still, her boss is under pressure to close down the case as quickly as possible, to claim that the crime was merely the deed of a loony, one of those unpredictable tragedies that no one could have predicted, and to pretend that there are no further ramifications. It doesn't look as if May is going to be able to bring the truth out into the open . . .

This novel isn't a thriller or a mystery, even though it deals with violent matters. Rather, it's an examination of the facets of bullying, and also of the error of judging horrific episodes at face value. I imagine, too, there's some allegory concerning the way in which the world's powerful nations generally treat the poorer, weaker ones abominably and then are idiotically startled on those rare occasions when factions within those countries for once hit back.

The narrative technique is interesting, with chapters of straightforward third-person narration, following May in her investigation and as she tries to deal with her colleagues, interspersed with supposed transcripts of tape-recorded interviews with some of the people concerned with the case. In the latter we "hear" just the voices of the interviewees, which is a tad risky because sometimes we flounder briefly while working out what the question must have been. Another difficulty is that Lelic captures very well those voices; as some of the interviewees are rather dull and/or moronic individuals, there are are a few (luckily briefish) passages where you wish he'd just get on with it.

Overall, though, this is a very grim, very powerful book. It's also a pretty tough one to face, in places. Bullying is among the vilest traits of the human animal, and its institutionalization makes the nightmare yet worse for its victims. More than once I had to put the book down for a moment just to let my head -- or my eyes -- clear.

Much recommended.

[Maicie · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Wikipedia, Death by a Thousand Cuts refers to the way a major negative change, which happens slowly in many unnoticed increments, is not perceived as objectionable. The book takes the reader on a horrifying journey of a young teacher’s torment that results in his own death as well as three students and a colleague. Detective Lucia May is in charge of what her boss calls an open-and-shut case. Lucia is also a victim of bullying by the men in her department. She finds herself relating to and empathizing with the killer. As she gathers information into the school shooting, she resolves to bring the truth to light.

An interesting and enlightening twist on the subject of bullying.

[Bert Edens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually just stumbled onto this one while looking for books at the public library.

This book was an outstanding read. There's a shooting in a school assembly in London. A history teacher shoots and kills three students and one teacher before turning the gun on himself.

Open and shut case, right?

Not so fast. As the story develops you have to ask, was this guy simply deranged, or was he plopped down into a school that promotes of culture of hate, bullying and even cyberbullying?

A must read for pretty much everyone. You won't regret it.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure what to make of this book going into it because the subject matter hits closer to me than it may others since I teach. But, there is so much more to this than just a school shooting. I think the alternating narration plays a big part in making the plot work. But mostly I hope when others read this it opens their eyes to how we treat one another and how we allow our children to treat one another. We have to do better, and I’m glad this novel goes there in order to preach that message.

[Holly Lambert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed most of this book, until the last quarter of the book. Great job showing the ultimate cost of bullying, but the ending was somewhat confusing in the way it was written and the author doesn't share the resolving of anything.

[Bilitis Nijs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spannend en vlot!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

A Thousand Cuts by Simon Lelic is a riveting mystery that is also quite poignant.

Detective Inspector Lucia May's latest case is supposed to be an open and shut investigation of a London school shooting.  There is no doubt that history teacher Samuel Szajkowski walked into an assembly then shot and killed three students, a fellow teacher and turned the gun on himself. But as Lucia interviews the students and staff at the school, she knows there is more to this incident than a cursory look reveals. But will her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Cole, permit her to continue her investigation?

Lucia is troubled by the picture that is beginning to emerge as she investigates Samuel and the months leading up to the shooting.  There is no disagreement that Samuel was a bit of a loner who kept himself to himself after his relationship with a fellow teacher ended.  He also had an antagonistic relationship with a fellow teacher that continued to deteriorate. Samuel failed to gain control over some of his students right from the start and his complaints to headmaster Mr. Travis fell on deaf ears.  His situation at school grew worse in the new year but Samuel seemed to be coping despite the pressure he must have been under. So Lucia is determined to unearth exactly what precipitated his unfathomable decision to fire upon the students and co-workers.

Lucia's chapters are written in third person and alternate between her interviews with Samuel's fellow staff members and students.  The investigation begins to hit a little close to home as Lucia realizes there are a few parallels between her life and Samuel's. She struggles with confronting a co-worker on his repugnant behavior that is worsening by the day. Lucia is also very frustrated with her boss as he pressures her into writing her report to support his viewpoint instead of reflecting the facts.  When the case is taken out of her hands, what, if any, action will Lucia take to ensure the truth emerges about the school shooting?

A Thousand Cuts is a very compelling mystery with an innovative storyline and an appealing lead protagonist.  Lucia remains true to herself no matter the consequences  as she endeavors to uncover the truth about what drove Samuel to kill. The witness chapters are written with an authentic voice for each character and some easier to read than others. With an unexpected plot twist, Simon Lelic brings this incredible story to an unpredictable, yet completely satisfying, conclusion.  An absolutely outstanding mystery that packs an incredible punch.

[Faye Irani · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,7/5

[Eline Hertogs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik weet niet goed wat ik er juist van moet vinden daarom geef ik het ook maar 3 sterren.

Het was een raar verhaal maar er zat wel een mooie boodschap achter vond ik persoonlijk. Het boek is ook niet chronologisch en als een hoofdstuk eindigde was er nergens in het boek een vervolg van. Hier stoorde ik mij wel aan want er gebeurde wel altijd iets of er werd iets gezegd dat heel spannend was.
Ook kwamen er veel verschillende personages in voor.

Al deze elementen samen maakten het nogal moeilijk/ingewikkeld om te lezen.

[Franny · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A Thousand Cuts" By Simon Lelic starts off with how two students hear, find out and respond to Samuel's actions, a teacher at a London school, who killed a teacher and 3 students resulting from months of bullying and taunting. The story develops into how Lucia tries to recover her steps to try to get into the mental state of Samuel before and while he commited the crime. The following chapters are the conversations of diffrent characters from their point of views resulting from the shooting, the bullying and the pressure that Lucia presses to get to the bottom of the case. Some chapters are about Lucia's own bullying that she goes through at work with Walter a fellow detective. Until Lucia starts to get the truth and realizes she has to try to get the parents to fight even if they do not win for her sake and for the sake of the students who had a right to be protected by a care of duty by the school. I think this book is very real in terms of bullying and how when nothing is done it can sometimes get worse.Bullying is something that needs to be spearheaded for radical change not shut an eye at as many characters did in this novel. Lucia is a brave and in my opinion a caring detective who attempts to do more than her job but it shut down because she is a woman, new and is smart. In the end she wins in that she gets the parents of Elliot to sue based on precedence and she resigns from her position leaving her boss to want to negotiate.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style of this novel was very refreshing. Just about each chapter is someone else talking to Lucia, a homicide detective. Lucia's questions to the witnesses are families are rarely recorded in this novel, but it does not make it hard to follow at all. Leaving the authority- Lucia- out of the testimonials makes the novel edgy and raw. The testimonials seem more raw and emotional this way. I also liked how Lelic took a controversial issue in our schools today and showed us what can happen because of it. Bullying will always happen, but ignoring it and letting it get out of hand can lead to drastic consequences, including school shootings.

I felt sorry for every character in here, the shooter, victims, and bullies alike. No one deserved to be treated like they were, including Lucia. She even faced some bullying by her department, regardless of the case they were working on. Ironic, if you ask me.

Lastly, this book takes place in London and the language and spellings let you know that. It was weird at first to see words normally spelled with a "z" here in the United States spelled with a "s" in the novel. Example: recognised for recognized. Every once in a while I would catch myself thinking, "Oh dear, they spelled that wrong!" :)

For a first novel, Simon Lelic did very well. I will be keeping my eye out for more. Cannot wait to see what he can come up with next.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to audiobook
The format was a backwards telling of the tale through the police interviews and investigator insights.
I liked the many perspectives from student, teacher, parent, family…
You get to hear how many very different people perceive a situation and a person.
This was an interesting perspective on a school shooting where a teacher is the shooter
You don’t hear about the torment teachers experience at the hands and mouths of students
Kids can be cruel and even evil
The lack if remorse and abundance of bravado is terrifying
It also shed light on how HARD it is to get HELP for bullying-outward or clandestine bullying
Anything the victim says will make things worse and when you can’t “walk away” what do you do???
There was even a good take on why a parent might not remove a child when they know the situation is bad-the alternatives are just as bad or worse…
This book really made me think, question, wonder…what is the right thing to do? How can I be part if a solution and not a problem??
The only thing I have right now is-be kind—there us never a real to be mean, cruel or a jerk.
The ending was less satisfying and more of a “ this is the best we can do” in a a situation that was horrible.
Prayers for the future
3 1/2 stars as I wish there would have been more background and perspectives on Samuel and sometimes I wasn’t sure WHO was talking-there were SO many interviews

[Jacquelyn Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was moving and a great book to read if you want to get sucked in and not stop! It is truly suspenseful and definitely worth reading! The idea of a school shooting is very surreal, but this book gives you an inside of what it is like, which is a bit frightening to be quite honest!

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this all in one evening when I should have been doing something else. Excellently paced story...thriller? mystery? It's one of those stories where the voice of the narrator seems to shift a lot but it is the voice of several interviewees. That is the sort of device that I quite enjoy, though I know it can bother other people.

It takes place around an incident in a British public high school, where a teacher opens fire on a school assembly and kills three students, a teacher, and himself. When Detective Inspector May begins investigating, she discovers that it is more than just an open and shut case. As she uncovers the very modern bullying in the background of this school, it becomes clear that it isn't the easy case that her superiors want it to be. As DI May investigates, it also becomes clear that her own professional life is rife with conflict behind the scenes.

These two paragraphs that I've just typed don't really capture the intensity and spectacular pacing of this story. And, of course, bullying is a really timely topic right now. I definitely recommend this one.

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't a book I'd have chosen for myself, I've just read it for a book group I've just joined and it certainly was thought provoking enough to generate discussion and controversy.

I can't really say I liked this book, it was just ok but it did have me quite gripped once I got into the quite difficult to follow, style of writing.

As the main narrator is a detective investigating a school shooting many of the chapters take the format of police statements as recorded, but it doesn't make it clear whose voice we are listening to and at several points it jumps back into the past without making it clear that's what's happening.

I found this made it pretty difficult to follow.

Combined with the fact that its basically about bullying, it made me quite annoyed that the people being bullied LET themselves become and continue to be victims by such obnoxious characters, in particular the revolting Charlie whose behaviour made me want to get a gun and use it!

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this one up when I was crushing on The Facility; that is, before I had reached the point where the more I read, the less I liked it. So I was prejudiced to not like this one, and while I admire the narrative voices, this novel did not achieve anything. I did not believe the character, Inspector May, who seemed like an naive innocent who had just wandered into her job. I wished the individual chapters had names identifying the voice, so I would not have to work at guessing who was speaking (that seemed especially gimmicky and trying to be too clever. Why make the reader do all the work?). The plot symmetry of having Lucia May experience the bullying and harassment at her work place seemed forced. Is any of that enough to make a police inspector sympathetic to a school shooter? You must be nuts. Quit your job, find another line of work: bringing a gun to a school assembly is not an option.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book impossible to put down. It took me through a labrynth of humanity on the road to figure out why a school shooting happened through the experiences of the woman investigator, Lucia, and those she interviewed. I found the perspectives of the other characters confusing at first--I wondered who was hearing these--but once I got the drift that these were what Lucia was hearing the pages kept turning and the layers of the novel got more complicated. I thought Lucia could have been rendered more fully, but as it is written the plot ruled and certainly pulled me through.

It's a hard book because of the topic, bullying. I thought the motives and relationships among the people in 'power' who were implicated in this story could have beeen clarified more. So the end, while effective, I thought could have been more powerfully braided together--which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing, intense and very very sad. This book is a story of what awful awful things can happen when someone is bullied. In this book what is most interesting is that the inspector investigating the incident is also being bullied by her own team. This is such a tough subject to read but this was done in an amazing manner. I really did not want to put this book down. My empathy for the characters was very strong. I imagine all readers will feel for them and the injustices they were forces to suffer through. The bullies were in all forms...teachers, policemen and other students. The sadness came from what actually happened and how each bullied victim suffered so horribly. I found this to be a very insightful reading experience. The author is masterful in his portrayals of his characters.