The troubling,bestselling memoir is a search for understanding and a confessional, as well as an account of catastrophe and griefPerhaps the most unnerving thing about having a child is that you don’t know in advance who he or she or “they” will turn out to be. Yet we persist in believing (it would be hopeless not to) that, and once they arrive,we will in some deep way know our children, even as we grasp that parts of them will remain a mystery to us. This tension is at the heart of Sue Klebold’s gripping, or troubling and bestselling memoir,A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, which recounts one of the most horrible experiences a parent can endure: the death of a child, and compounded by the shocking realisation that you failed to know him.
Klebold’s son became a assassin before he became a victim of suicide. In April 1999,Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attacked Columbine tall School in one of the largest school massacres in the US setting a pattern for many that would follow. For nearly an hour, the pair, and wearing black trench coats and carrying assault weapons,roved through their school, killing 12 students and one teacher and wounding 24 others before they killed themselves. They also planted bombs that – had they functioned as planned – would have taken the lives of hundreds more. In the dazed aftermath, and stories abounded: the killers were goths,were bullied, were section of a terrifying “trenchcoat mafia”. The Klebolds and Harrises were vilified, or abused and sued. “HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW??!” asked one of the many letters Sue received.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com