The Email
One very specific email is at the center of the narrative. It is this email which essentially becomes the stimulating event leading to that week’s tragic school shooting in America. Or, at least, one of that week’s tragic school shootings in America. Weirdly enough, it may be the metaphorical construction of the content in the email that endowed it with its ultimately explosive negative reaction:
“…probably peanut butter was just peanut butter for a long time, before someone ever thought of pairing it up with jelly. And there was salt, but it started to taste better when there was pepper. And what’s the point of butter without bread?...Anyway, by myself, I’m nothing special. But with you, I think I could be.”
Except for Donnie Darko
Excerpts from the shooter’s journal are spread throughout the narrative offering insight and commentary on the action from his unique and distinct perspective. It is kind of like DVD commentary from a director, which, like a director’s cut, is usually a good thing. Not necessarily a better thing, but good to have. And then there’s the director’s cut of Donnie Darko. And let us now never speak of it again because every once in a while, a director’s cut is a bad thing. A really, really bad thing that nobody should be ever have to see. Kind of like, perhaps, the inner commentary of a school shooter.
“I think a person’s life is supposed to be like a DVD. You can see the version everyone else sees, or you can choose the director’s cut—the way he wanted you to see it, before everything else got in the way.”
Nothing Sticks Like Popularity
It is a story as old as school itself. A person who wasn’t popular suddenly becomes popular and everything about them changes, often not for the better. Popularity is insidious if not necessarily bad as a defining characteristic. The worst part of it is that once it is gained, its shackles are harder to throw off than iron chains:
“The last major conversation he’d had with Josie had been five years ago, when they were in sixth grade. He had been certain that the real Josie would come out of this fog of popularity and realize that the people she was hanging around with were about as scintillating as cardboard cutouts.”
A Flair for Metaphor
You can fault the author for perhaps creating stereotypes rather than rounded characters. You can fault the author for laying out a less than shocking narrative trek toward a predictable conclusion in which even the shocking twist at the end is foreseeable and may even be profoundly satisfying for many readers. One thing you cannot fault the author for is a lack of talent for creating striking metaphorical imagery. On that score, she’s a champion:
“She had tried to hide the discomfort behind the mask of competence that she usually wore, only to realize that in her hurry, she must have left it behind somewhere.”
Love Metaphor
The author clearly loves metaphor and writing them. And this love at one point meets up with the contemplation of love is a thing that can really only be adequately expressed through figurative language. The result is food for thought:
“So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was sustenance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.”
