Fabulous reads: School shootings highlighted in heartbreaking YA novel
Book review - That's Not What Happened by Kody Keplinger.
That’s Not What Happened, Kody Keplinger, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781444933628
IT has been three years since a fellow student walked into the halls of Virgil County High School and shot at random, killing nine students and two teachers.
Kody Keplinger’s That’s Not What Happened follows Lee Bauer, a freshman who was hiding with her best friend, Sarah Mchale, in the bathroom as the massacre unfolded.
She witnessed the shooter killing Sarah in cold blood. To this day, everyone believes that when the shooter confronted them in the bathroom, Sarah defended her faith, and died a martyr.
However, Lee, one of the shooting’s six famous survivors, knows the truth of what really happened in the bathroom on that tragic day. But, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she initially fails to speak up, and before she knew it, the story had spun out of control.
Over the years, out of fear and guilt for betraying her friend’s memory she found it increasingly difficult to reveal the truth.
But, when she discovers that Sarah’s family plans to publish a book about their daughter and the massacre, Lee tries to rope in the other five survivors to tell their side of the story, and to share with the world what really happened on the day of the massacre.
In her search for the truth, however, she uncovers more secrets than she could ever have imagined.
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Keplinger has penned a powerful rendition of one of the most talked about topics of the 20th century, school shootings.
But rather than focusing on the massacre and the shooter, she channels the novel primarily on the aftermath – the survivors, who are trying to move on from the trauma. Nowhere in the book is the shooter named or any time spent on trying to understand his motivation or reasoning.
While she avoids the politics behind this timely topic, she does blatantly suggest how the truth of these incidents is often skewed and romanticised, not only by the media but the public at large.
What Keplinger has managed to poignantly achieve is to give a voice to the victims and to give us – as outsiders – some idea of what they go though and how they actually remain victims of trauma, years after the incident that has turned their lives upside down.
The author has created beautifully flawed and vulnerable characters who are all lovable and relatable.
Their desperate struggles to work through and move on from the shooting are absolutely heartbreaking. Keep a box of tissues close by.
As 2018 saw the highest number of school shootings in the United States since 2006, this novel could be the perfect piece of literature to open discussion on the controversial topics surrounding school shootings.
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