A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy
By: Sue Klebold / Narrated By: Andrew Solomon, Sue Klebold
Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
For Mother’s Day, I’ll try not to be toooo vitriolic about this one…
I mean, I’ll try not to get as worked up as I did when I did my first review of it over on Audible.
Cuz back then it was like this, see: The first listen? I was shocked and exasperated. The second listen? I was downright furious because I caught all the little things and had time to really think about them. For this third listen?
Well, I’m trying to remember that we can only make our choices in the moment, and Hindsight is 20/20.
Hmmm… But the thing is, I don’t think Sue Klebold’s Hindsight is all that good. Here she’s written and narrated her story of life with her son Dylan, one of the shooters of the Columbine school massacre, and I’m stiiiiiill not seeing that she has much self-awareness.
I’ll give it to her, though. She has A LOT of guts in writing and putting herself forward, subjecting herself to such public scrutiny. And over on Audible, the audiobook is rated with 4.7 stars, so obviously a whole helluva lot of people think she’s just great. Some of the reviews just glooooooow and go on about how courageous and selfless she is.
I beg to differ. …just a tad…
See, what I heard was that she ignored Dylan’s problems for a looooong time, dealing with her oldest son’s unfortunate behavior and poor choices and not seeing that her poor youngest son was DEPRESSED. No, I don’t hold her responsible for Dylan’s choice to murder, for his choice of suicide—nobody should carry that burden. But I heard her going on about his shutting down, his altered sleep habits. I heard her say she just never took an interest in what he was doing; when she did have a chance to interact with him, she talked about herself, her own dreams and projects (Uhm, maybe you could check his homework every now and again, especially when a teacher points out disturbing and violent essays? How about taking an interest in video productions he does? Where he, like, shoots people?). I heard her screeeeeeeaming at him and becoming physically violent with him for forgetting Mother’s Day. I heard her correcting him, suggesting endlessly how he “could do better”—just after he was embarrassed during a sporting event and humiliated by his best friend (But Sue says, she just couldn’t help herself. She haaaaad to tell him how to be better). I heard her downplay his lawbreaking behavior; not only that, but she wants lesser consequences for his actions, and she tells him so. (What are you teaching, Sue?!?).
A Mother’s Reckoning is a really, really good book, verrrrry thought-provoking (God knows, I felt provoked!). And Sue really shines as a grief-stricken mother of a child who committed suicide. It’s just that she really didn’t do a whole lot for me when she says it was Eric who was the psychopath and that Dylan was just filled with hearts and flowers—he did, after all, purposefully NOT shoot four people he could’ve murdered. Awwwww, what a sweetheart!
All right, so maybe I failed with leaving out the vitriol about this audiobook for this review…?
My apologies. Good book, but be prepared to think of Sue Klebold as either Mother of the Year, or as somebody who let a profoundly depressed and deeply disturbed boy go without treatment or help.
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