--- title: Novels How to Be Safe and Only Child Tackle School Shootings description: Rhiannon Navin’s "Only Child" and Tom McAllister’s "How to Be Safe" show how fiction can process painful elements of contemporary culture. canonical: https://time.com/5220108/two-novels-that-take-on-the-reality-of-school-shootings/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-29T10:42:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T19:48:58.681Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Two Novels That Take On the Reality of School Shootings og:description: ‘Only Child’ and ‘How to Be Safe’ show how fiction processes the times og:url: https://time.com/5220108/two-novels-that-take-on-the-reality-of-school-shootings/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3330fa6d6f4e36ac/69892c4ce76ad245bb631867/parkland-school-shooting-books-only-child-how-to-be-safe-a-novel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: Parkland School Shooting Books og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Two Novels That Take On the Reality of School Shootings twitter:description: ‘Only Child’ and ‘How to Be Safe’ show how fiction processes the times twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3330fa6d6f4e36ac/69892c4ce76ad245bb631867/parkland-school-shooting-books-only-child-how-to-be-safe-a-novel.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Two Novels That Take On the Reality of School Shootings > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 29, 2018 10:42 AM UTC  Inside the classroom of teacher Jeff Foster at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school on March 7, 2018 Inside the classroom of teacher Jeff Foster at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school on March 7, 2018 Gabriella Demczuk for TIME by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Mar 29, 2018 10:42 AM UTC Maybe you don’t want to read a novel about a school shooting; many people wouldn’t. But if you are open, or even eager, to see how fiction can process one of the more painful elements of contemporary American society, two new novels are at hand. The first is Rhiannon Navin’s _Only Child_, which, like Emma Donoghue’s _Room_, is a book for adults as told from the perspective of a child living through something terrible. The main character is first-grader Zachary Taylor. On page 1, we find him hiding inside his classroom’s closet with his teacher and peers while a shooter rampages–a tableau reminiscent of Sandy Hook. On page 28, we learn that Zach’s older brother Andy is dead. His parents are so traumatized by their loss that they can hardly help their young son cope with his PTSD, which leads to bed-wetting, violent nightmares and uncharacteristic tantrums. Navin skillfully inhabits the consciousness of one too young to understand: the night after the shooting, looking at the family calendar, Zach thinks, “Yesterday we did all the things we do every Tuesday, because we didn’t know that today a gunman was going to come.” The shooter is a troubled young man, but Navin complicates the situation by giving Andy a history of serious behavioral problems himself. After Andy dies, Zach expects family life to improve; maybe his family will stop fighting all the time. Andy’s backstory elevates the book above a sob story–but redemption, recovery and hope remain the name of the game. For a grittier take, there’s Tom McAllister’s _How to Be Safe_. Advance copies arrived months ago, and I had just finished reading the book when the shooting happened at [Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla](http://time.com/5178905/students-return-marjory-stoneman-douglas-high-school-florida-shooting/). The parallels are chilling: in the book, an angry young man returns to his old school, pulls a fire alarm to sow confusion and opens fire, killing 19. The focus this time is on a teacher. Anna Crawford is actually at home the day of the shooting; she has been suspended for strange outbursts in the classroom. The shooter initially evades arrest, and Anna’s suspension from work leads law enforcement to take her into custody as a suspect. Once proved innocent, she returns to her ransacked home to pass the days unemployed, depressed and usually drunk. But as unhinged as Anna is, she seems to be the only one who gets it. When the shooter’s manifesto surfaces, she describes it as “depressing in its banality, in its adolescent conviction that he’d discovered some grand truth about how people are phonies … how the world is mostly about pain. As if we didn’t all know this, as if we also weren’t trying to find ways to deal with it that didn’t involve murder.” _How to Be Safe_ resists the hopeful messaging found in _Only Child_; Anna sees that something is rotten in these United States, and she refuses to gloss over it. When a journalist visits and asks what “lessons” the citizens have learned from the ordeal, Anna muses on the idiocy of the question: “Lessons. As if we’d just graduated and become American grownups because we’d finally bathed in the blood of our neighbors.” Anna is messy, intelligent, absurd, rude; you might even say distasteful. You could not call this a pleasant novel. 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