Book Review: "A Thousand Cuts" by Simon Lelic

Title: A Thousand Cuts

Author: Simon Lelic

Publisher: Viking

ISBN, PUB Date: 0670021504 , March 4, 2010

Reviewed by: Joan Hanna for Author Exposure

“She tried to ignore the state of the hall and to picture it as he would have seen it; every seat full, the children silent for once given the circumstances of the assembly, some of them crying and trying not to. The teachers seated in rows flanking the headmaster, jaws tense, eyes downcast or fixed on the headmaster himself...Travis would have seen him walk through the doors of course. Some of the teachers would have too, though they could not have made out what he was carrying.” (13)

In A Thousand Cuts, Simon Lelic gives the reader a portrait not only of a man who has been pushed to the edge and committed a savage act, but also the many aspects that comprise a crime of this nature. First, there is Detective Inspector Lucia May, who walks the crime scene at a school in which a math teacher has quietly entered an assembly and opened fire, causing five deaths— including his own. Lucia alone believes there is something more to the story and continues to investigate even though her superiors insist it is an open and shut case. But Lucia is determined to get into the layers beneath the motives of the shooter and begins to piece together an atmosphere of bullying and viciousness.

A Thousand Cuts is written with alternating chapters in the voice of the persons being interviewed, which gives a multi-faceted perspective that looks at this crime from both sympathetic and unsympathetic eyes. Nothing about this case is as simple as it seems on the surface. This book takes a while to settle into; the reader has to develop a set of sea legs in order to begin to move with the flow of the book. But once the reader has those sea legs, A Thousand Cuts becomes an intriguing study of human nature and the things one can be hard-pressed to do if all the right buttons are pushed. The first-person responses to what happened at the school paint a grim picture of how bullying at the school begins with the students and is, ultimately, ignored and perpetuated by the faculty.

The story follows Detective Inspector May’s investigation into the case against Samuel Szajkowski, the math teacher responsible for the shootings, but there are so many paths and turns along the way. As the story unfolds from students, teachers, and students’ families, we begin to see the portrait of a man driven to this horrible act by a ruthless group of students that have abused and embarrassed not only Szajkowski, but many other students as well. And as some of the other teachers and the headmaster turn a blind eye to the entire situation, the inevitable result becomes a logical, though thoroughly avoidable, conclusion. Lucia begins to see a pattern of abuse and disregard at the school that suggests the Headmaster was derelict in his duties. But when she brings this to her superiors, they are not willing to support this point of view and her problems only get worse from there.

A Thousand Cuts is as much a look into the social hierarchy of labeling and disenfranchisement that exists today, as it is a comment on the frustration of children and adults alike when faced with a bully that seems to hold all the power. Lelic takes us from schoolyard bullies to mean-spirited teachers to Lucia’s co-worker who has taken abuse in the workplace to a terrorizing level. This book will get under your skin. You will feel empathy for Lucia, you will feel sorry for Szajkowski, and your heart will break for the parents of the children killed in the spree. But mostly, you will begin to have an eerie feeling creep up your back as you think about the many times you looked the other way and didn’t consider the ultimate result of seemingly harmless teasing. A Thousand Cuts is a stark, blunt, no holds barred look at fear, abuse, and what happens in the minds of victims who feel they have no place left to go.