Castlebar Book Club
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting. (Previous Book Club selections)
Rupture by Simon Lelic
A brassed-off history teacher, Samuel Szajkowski, walks into a secondary school assembly, shoots three children and one teacher dead, and kills himself, using an antiquated revolver. The first we hear of it in Simon Lelic's arresting debut is in the account given to the investigating inspector, Lucia May, by a feckless and garrulous lad who wasn't even on the premises at the time.
This account (in which, as in tmany subsequent statements, May's contributions are cleverly omitted) is immediate evidence that Lelic has an exceptional talent for voice. This talent means the reader is yanked into the narrative, and teased into persisting. It's true that the unvarying pattern of the novel – a succession of 15 "'monologues" interspersed with May's experiences – is risky. You could say that 15 voices is too ambitious; that it is impossible to distinguish them; that the structure leads to a degree of predictability. Yet Lelic pulls this off, each speaker helping the reader puzzle out what has happened and, more importantly, why.
You can read Rupture as a whydunnit, but it is a novel, above all else, about bullying: mental and physical torment. It's not just that there is a parallel case at the school about a boy assaulted for having ginger hair and a birthmark. May herself is bullied throughout, by her so-called colleagues, and by her boss (who has more than a touch of Mullet, as in Frost, about him).
The children, teachers, parents and others who take us slowly closer to what has been done to Szajkowski, and why, live in a world of casual psychological violence. Their sheer self-absorption is what makes this novel so startling, so dark. If it is foreseeable that we will wind up siding with the killer, the process of shifting our allegiance is subtle and constant.
Lelic faces two tasks more difficult than building the narrative structure. The first is to avoid stereotyping some of the characters. The lecherous detective who invades May's space, and the headmaster of the aspiring school, come perilously close to being caricatures. The second is to leaven a brutal progress with bitter humour. No problems here: Lelic has a perfect ear for the wayward manner in which May's witnesses carelessly blurt out their self-aggrandising accounts. The horrible description of a football match between the staff and pupils, a brilliant set piece, is grimly entertaining.
Lelic can write like a poet – a doctor's jaw tightens so that it looks "as though he were attempting to swallow a screwdriver". The novel is full of these crackling images. The pace is as ferocious as the subject, and some characters – notably the PE teacher who corrupts or calcifies every person with whom he has contact – are expertly grotesque. Lelic's novel may be his first; but you wouldn't know it, it is so controlled, yet confidently reckless.
The Guardian
Simon Lelic’s debut novel, about a teacher who turns out to be a psychopath, is genuinely frightening. Lelic manages to evoke in crisp, accessible prose what it’s like to work in a modern school where bullying is rife. Perhaps most terrifying of all is the author’s gift for characterisation, which means that by the end of the book the reader actually sympathises with a murderous pedagogue.
The Times
A superior detective novel, Rupture by Simon Lelic opens with a teacher who kills three pupils in assembly before turning the gun on himself, while the young policewoman Lucia May is set the task of finding out what led to such an awful act.
Daily Express
Artfully offering a range of perspectives on the events leading up to the fatal day, Lelic manages to make the murderer sympathetic as he sensitively explores the varying degrees of responsibility for the tragedy borne by others whose response to bullying was inadequate. This deeply human and moving book heralds a bright new talent.
Publishers Weekly
A tour de force of storytelling from Picador.
Granta
Packs a gutsy punch.
Daily Mail
Rupture, it turns out, is not necessarily a crime novel but one which trenchantly addresses a host of issues: bullying, a lost generation of children at odds with society and the struggles of adults to come to terms with the cruelty in their own nature. It is a remarkable debut.
Daily Express
Simon Lelic's impressive and fast-paced debut borrows its structure from a standard police procedural, with a fish-out-of-water cop at its centre. . . What slowly emerges, however, is something more nuanced, as Lelic explores themes of bullying and complicity, taking swipes at the increasing commercialisation of Britain's state-school system along the way. An artful study of what theologians might term `the sin of omission', Rupture keeps readers guessing until the end.
Financial Times
Simon Lelic's gripping debut is draped in this torn social fabric . . . we are skilfully drawn into the plot by the competing voices . . . I see a TV film on the horizon.
Time Out
Lelic's first novel is impressive in its scope and structural daring. A third-person narrative inhabiting Lucia's mind alternates with first-person eyewitness accounts, and Lelic superbly captures the wildly different vocabularies and rhythms of speech of parents, teachers and pupils. This is a superior detective novel, proof that crime fiction can break free of the bounds of the genre into something much more complex.
Daily Telegraph
Just confident and accomplished . . . [Lelic] captures the different tones of characters' voices brilliantly and the novel is a cool, controlled view of various kinds of institutionalised cruelty and corruption . . . his restraint is admirable and Rupture has none of the common self indulgences of debut novels. He is definitely a writer to watch.
Spectator
Readers' Resources
Dedicated to book clubs, ReadersPlace.co.uk (Random House) is a website where reading groups can find inspiration, have their say on books, and connect with other book clubs and authors. Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- CompletelyNovel.com links readers as well as new writers, offering a one-stop author-reader experience.
- Book Group Links: A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
- Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
- Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
- Reading Group Guides: A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
- Writer's Resource site for writers of all abilities