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Summary
Summary
FORMER TEACHER HAD MOTIVE. Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works. Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Gun sales skyrocket, victims are transformed into martyrs, and the rules of public mourning are ruthlessly enforced. Anna decides to wholeheartedly reject the culpability she's somehow been assigned, and the rampant sexism that comes with it, both in person and online. A piercing feminist howl written in trenchant prose, How to Be Safe is a compulsively readable, darkly funny exposé of the hypocrisy that ensues when illusions of peace are shattered.
Author Notes
Tom McAllister is the author of The Young Widower's Handbook and nonfiction editor of Barrelhouse magazine. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is an associate professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
For a brief time in the relentless latest from McAllister (following The Young Widower's Handbook), suspended high school English teacher Anna Crawford is named a person of interest in the police investigation of a mass shooting at her school. Her first-person narrative picks up in the aftermath of the tragedy. Anna was suspended before the shooting for an unspecified outburst in the classroom. After the shooting, which ends when the unnamed male shooter kills himself, broadcast journalists show her picture and identify her as a suspect. In the chaos following the tragedy, she is bombarded with threatening phone calls, her home is searched by the FBI, and friends betray her. Even after the shooter is identified as a student and it is proven that he had no accomplices, the damage done to Anna proves hard for her to move past. McAllister's novel unfolds both as grim social commentary and a subtle exploration of the stages of grief. Anna, with some gallows humor, describes journalists swarming the young shooter's house and analyzing him ad nauseam, the way she becomes a target for well-wishers seeking to save her, and the constant churning arguments of both gun control opponents and proponents. Though Anna's voice is strong, the novel falters in its depiction of the tragedy's fallout, often electing to skim the surface instead of going deep. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Dozens are dead or wounded after a high-school shooting in Seldom Falls, Pennsylvania, and suspended-teacher Anna Crawford is an early suspect. Anna, the narrator, grew up in the town, knew almost all of the victims, and heard the gunshots from her home. Now news outlets are camped on her lawn, her few friends are selling stories about her or reaching out in less-than-genuine ways, and it turns out her suspension was a permanent dismissal. The story, still somewhat vague, behind Anna's firing and pictures of her unhappy childhood and adult difficulties emerge, along with brief bios of the victims and Anna's (or maybe the author's) funny-and-not directions, as the title suggests, to staying safe in America today. Though Anna, who readers will empathize with and root for, drinks and behaves erratically, this is no new Girl novel. As for the massacre itself, focus stays on the victims, and violence occurs mainly off the page. Combining a deep character study, prescient satire, and an unfortunately all-too-timely evisceration of U.S. gun culture, McAllister's (The Young Widower's Handbook, 2017) well-voiced and remarkably observed page-turner is in almost all ways an anti-thriller itself a comment on the current, terrifying mundanity of similar events.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This darkly humorous primal scream of a novel takes as its subject the madness of modern American life, with all manner of violence, misogyny, paranoia, and self-righteousness on full, seedy display. At the center is a mass shooting at a public school, which leaves young high school English teacher Anna Crawford devastated. Already on what she considers an unjust suspension, Anna is further implicated in the tragedy, and she spends the entire novel trying to understand what happened and searching in vain for a way to be "safe." McAllister (The Young Widower's Handbook) suggests that this may not be possible, given the Internet trolls, vigilante busybodies, and future mass murderers hiding anonymously and angrily among us. Remarkably, the author is able to find some humor in the situation. VERDICT A blistering, Swiftian portrait of a nation that has lost its moral center, this book is a compelling from start to finish. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of literary fiction, psychological drama, and dystopian fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 10/16/17.]--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester -Community Coll., CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.