A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy in Obsessed with True Crime

Jan 13, 2018 Jess rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, crime-and-mystery, parent-child-relationships, mental-illness, grief, colorado, true-crime, school-shooting, memoir

I wrote a nice, long review for this book, then it got gobbled up by GoodReads bots, so I'm very sad. But maybe it will force me to condense it a little bit. Because in the end, this book is pretty much what you'd hope it to be--a unique perspective on a tragedy we all know, an account of violence by a grieving mother who tried so hard to avoid it, and a cautionary tale for all people who think they really know their loved ones.

I don't want to cheapen any of the messages Klebold very effectively I wrote a nice, long review for this book, then it got gobbled up by GoodReads bots, so I'm very sad. But maybe it will force me to condense it a little bit. Because in the end, this book is pretty much what you'd hope it to be--a unique perspective on a tragedy we all know, an account of violence by a grieving mother who tried so hard to avoid it, and a cautionary tale for all people who think they really know their loved ones.

I don't want to cheapen any of the messages Klebold very effectively got across in this book. She's a staunch advocate for mental/brain health awareness, suicide prevention, violence prevention, and the creation of programs to help kids and teens suffering from all of the above. But I found the most interesting and involving passages in the book to be about her day-to-day experiences as an attentive and loving mother to two young men and how she never guessed in a million years that her life would end up like this. She's certainly not asking for sympathy, forgiveness, or even understanding--she admits and accepts that she missed red flags and didn't take certain things Dylan said or did seriously enough. She doesn't try to defend Dylan. She's incredibly up front about how complicated her son could be, how moody and difficult, but like most parents, she just chalked it up to him being a teenager. In 99% of cases, she'd be absolutely right. It just so happens that she wasn't, and living with that has made her life utter hell ever since April 20, 1999.

And while I know this is only one perspective, and a very biased one, Klebold sounds like she was (and still is, to her older son) a really wonderful mom. She was fun, wise, hardworking, and gentle. She tried her best to keep her kids on the right path without smothering them. She often reminds me of my own mother, which breaks my heart. In other books written by loved ones and parents of perpetrators of violent crimes, there's sometimes a tone of defensiveness (I'm thinking how Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial by Rabia Chaudry, while an excellent book, is dripping in bias), but not in this book. Sue Klebold is trying to survive with a broken heart, and if writing this book helped her at all with that, I'm glad. She sounds like a really cool lady who has a lot of important stuff to say.

There were two main things I wish she addressed in the book that never came up. One was Dave Cullen's book Columbine. Considered the quintessential book on the Columbine shooting, Cullen's account is still incredibly controversial and is often debated by friends and family of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. It only came up in the ending acknowledgments, and Klebold thanks him for helping with some fact/timeline details, but I was really surprised she didn't mention it further. Perhaps she hasn't even read it. I guess I wouldn't blame her.

I was also really hoping for her to mention Mr. and Mrs. Harris in any capacity after the shooting. She often writes about how painfully lonely she is in the world because of the unique circumstances of her grief, so I was really wondering if the families ever reached out to one another. The Harrises have been famously quiet since the shooting, so maybe they requested privacy. Klebold is a classy woman, so I'm sure she would give it to them.

I found the GoodReads question one member asked about if the proceeds of this book really went to charity to be in poor taste--Klebold doesn't owe us or anyone else a damn thing. She didn't even owe us this book. If she gives the proceeds to charity, good for her. But even if she didn't, it's really none of our business. She's bled for the sins of her son enough, wouldn't you say? ...more

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Jun 28, 2016 Billy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

5/5

Much of it is about the fact that we want people who do unspeakable things to be "monsters," when it's much more complicated and horrifying than that--people who do awful things are ordinary human beings who just... well, we really haven't figured that part out yet. I believe that what happened to this family could probably happen to any other family. Sue Klebold doesn't discount her son's terrible actions in the slightest, but highlights that it was a suicide... which you don't really think ...more

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