A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

Book Overview

"In his powerful, wrenching debut, Lelic takes a sadly familiar crime and delves into the equally familiar menace at its root: bullying." -People In this riveting debut novel about sexism, bullying,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670021504
• ISBN13: 9780670021505
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 295 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Timely and thought provoking.

"Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong that had the liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had license to behave like such cowards?" So asks DI Lucia May in A Thousand Cuts (originally published in the UK under the title Rupture), the debut novel from author Simon Lelic. May is the detective charged with investigating the seemingly open and shut case of a shooting at a North London comprehensive school (the equivalent of an American public high school) that leaves five dead, including the gunman. The investigation that unfolds is not so much a whodunit as a whydunit, as it is clear from the outset that the shooter was one of the school's teachers, Samuel Szajkowski, who opened fire during a school assembly killing three students and a fellow teacher before turning the gun on himself. Szajkowski, a young man new to both teaching and the school, is described by students and faculty alike as having been somewhat of a misfit, odd and aloof, who never quite found his footing at the school. This, however, does not seem to DI May to be sufficient explanation for Szajkowski's murderous outburst, and her interviews with students and faculty indeed uncover a truth which is much more sinister. Lelic reveals the events which led up to the shooting through chapters that alternate between DI May's first person perspective and monologues from various people - students, parents, faculty - involved with and affected by the tragedy. The monologues are meant to represent transcriptions of interviews taped by DI May during the course of her investigation, but they omit May's side of the conversation. It's an interesting technique, one which lets the reader imagine what was said by May to elicit certain responses, to feel almost as though they were the one asking the questions. Unfortunately, they are questions which neither the school's headmaster nor May's boss seem to want asked, let alone answered. Szajkowski, it turns out, was the victim of bullying from both students and teachers, bullying which slowly escalated from merely verbal disrespect and defiance, to malicious pranks, and finally outright physical violence. And Szajkowski wasn't the only one. DI May learns that bullying seems to have become endemic at the school, and that only a few days before the shooting a student had been attacked and beaten so viciously that he ended up in the hospital. Throughout the course of the story Lelic presents an interesting juxtaposition of the bullying occurring at the school with sexual harassment being experienced by DI May in her CID unit, where she is the lone female member. And just as the school's headmaster was willing to turn a blind eye to the bullying within the halls of his school in order to maintain the school's positive public perception, May's boss seems equally willing to take an `it's not my problem, it will sort itself out' approach to the increasingly aggressive and hostile treatment May is re

Hardline apparoach to classroom management

A grim but gripping story of a school shooting and bullying in an English school. It uses a very clever narrative device. The story is told from the POV of the investigating detective (herself a victim of sexual harassment) but she interviews the other characters involved in the shooting, and each is given a voice. There is a certain amount of stereotyping and PC. The physical education teacher is a mindless jock; the black child is a saintly martyr; the administrators are unsympathetic bureaucrats. But it's all absolutely convincing, although some of the characters' methods of dealing with their problems sounded inept. It might be better for a teacher to seek a conference with the parents of a troublesome student before resorting to shooting. Zovirax might work better than toothpaste for a cold sore.

Hardline approach to classroom management problems

A grim but gripping story of a school shooting and bullying in an English school. It uses a very clever narrative device. The story is told from the POV of the investigating detective (herself a victim of sexual harassment) but she interviews the other characters involved in the shooting, and each is given a voice. There is a certain amount of stereotyping and PC. The physical education teacher is a mindless jock; the black child is a saintly martyr; the administrators are unsympathetic bureaucrats. But it's all absolutely convincing, although some of the characters' methods of dealing with their problems sounded inept. It might be better (in some schools at least) for a teacher to seek a conference with the parents of a troublesome student before resorting to shooting. Zovirax might work better than toothpaste for a cold sore.

Great Debut

This is a great mystery debut. The hero gets bullied (sexual harassment) while she investigates an assassin who was driven to kill by bullying at his school. It's a mystery melodrama, not a literary novel, even though its literary techniques give the book far more life than most mystery stories have. The policewoman heroine is bullied on the job too much for believability (the PRIME SUSPECT tv series did this kind of thing more subtly, and better) and the villainous school headmaster tolerates -- even encourages -- student bullies who are just short of homicidal. The result is that the reader feels more and more frustrated and outraged, while individual scenes tend to sag a tiny bit. We can be made to hate many of the characters; it's harder to believe in them fully. Nevertheless this is a tremendous effort. I got angry reading, and a short time later (the book is the length of a Robert B. Parker novel) I was deeply satisfied by a nice bittersweet ending. May Mr. Lelic write more and more of these.

A novel about bullying in British society

Told in alternating chapters of witness statements and straight narrative, this engrossing book explores what leads up to a shooting in a London school in which three students and a teacher are shot, before the gunman turns the weapon on himself. There's no mystery in who did it - obviously. But having shot himself, there is no clear source of information on what drove him to this action. The school and the police see it as a tragic, but clear cut event. All that is except for female detective Lucia May. Perhaps it is her female sensitivity that leads her to not accepting the easy answers, or perhaps its her own treatment within the all male environment of the Met that won't let her rest until the real issues are addressed. The book is fast paced and well written. By and large the difficult task of making each witness statement sound distinct from each other is carried off well. Not only that, but at the start of each interview you are never sure who is speaking, but each becomes clear without the author ever seeming to labour the point. The result is a disturbing, poignant exposé of what the press would call "institutionalised" bullying both in the school system and the police. Exposed too are the all too real effects of political pressures that have the effect of maintaining the status quo. Lucia May in particular is a well drawn character - and one that I'd love to read more about. It is her story and her investigation and perhaps some of the other characters are less well fleshed out, although equally this affords pathos to the story, which is all too real and feasible. I liked the general tone of the ending, but wasn't quite convinced by Lucia's final lines, which didn't seem likely to have had the effect that they are suggested to have, but all in all, a terrific, thought provoking book and highly recommended.