Seierstad does an incredible job telling the whole story of the massacre and its aftermath, the deeply flawed response by law enforcement and the families who lost children. Her writing, translated into English by Sarah Death, is both straightforward and compassionate. She doesn't spare the reader's feelings; it's a deeply painful book to experience ... One of Us is a masterpiece of journalism, a deeply painful chronicle of an inexplicable and horrifying attack that we'll likely never understand.
One of Us has the feel of a nonfiction novel. Like Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, it has an omniscient narrator who tells the story of brutal murders and, by implication, sheds light on the society partly responsible for them. Although those two books are beautifully written, I found One of Us to be more powerful and compelling ... On the whole, Seierstad has written a remarkable book, full of sorrow and compassion. After spending years away from home as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq, bearing witness to the crimes of other nations, she has confronted Norway’s greatest trauma since the Nazi occupation, without flinching and without simplifying.
[Seierstad's] taut narrative also reveals a series of heartbreakingly incompetent official decisions, without which many lives would have been saved. It would be an unremittingly dismal book if she hadn’t also profiled many victims and their families — in particular, the politically engaged youth gathered on Utoya, a tiny island owned by Norway’s Labour Party, whose loss to their parents and to their nation is clearly incalculable. The juxtaposition of their stories with their killer’s is what makes this book unforgettable.
Ms. Seierstad has read everything about Mr. Breivik and the case, interviewed everyone. (Her epilogue, about her methods, should be required reading in journalism schools.) She is determined to see Mr. Breivik, so much so that her steely approach put me in mind of something Roy Blount Jr. once said: 'If you won’t talk to me I’ll write about your face. If you won’t look at me I’ll write about the back of your head' ... The roughly 70 pages Ms. Seierstad devotes to it are harrowing in their forensic exactitude. She seems to note the trajectory and impact of every bullet Mr. Breivik fired ... It’s said that exact detail is uniquely helpful when it comes to mending after terrible events. If it is true, as Stephen Jay Gould contended, that 'nothing matches the holiness and fascination of accurate and intricate detail,' then Ms. Seierstad has delivered a holy volume indeed.
Through extensive interviews with survivors, she's constructed a minute-by-minute account of how the attack unfolded on the island — a narrative technique that could devolve into voyeurism but doesn't. That's because Seierstad depicts the students in all their messy adolescent humanity ... As hard as it is to read about the attack, as frustrating as it is to learn how many delaying mistakes the first responders made and as monstrous as Breivik is, the kids on that island that day were beautiful in their idealism. They deserve to be witnessed, which is the ultimate reason to read One of Us.
...despite these detailed accounts [of the killings], the writing is not sensationalized for dramatic effect. Seierstad is careful never to elevate Breivik to infamous celebrity status the way some cult leaders, murderers, and notorious criminals have become fetishized in history. One Of Us reads like a true crime novel, but it has the journalistic chops to back it up ... One Of Us is the story of Norway, its people, and the lengths one will go to feel like they belong. Not only a stunning achievement in journalism, it’s a touchstone on how to write about tragedy with detail, honesty, and compassion.
[Seierstad's] book is a psychiatric case history, as well as a close look at Norwegian society, not least by paying as much attention to Breivik’s victims, as to their murderer ... This book throws a great deal of light on the life and times of a miserable killer.
In Seierstad’s stark beginning, there are no names, not for the shooter nor for the young people he shot. We don‘t know the name of the girl who whispered 'No…' or the boy nearby who uttered a feeble 'I’m dying,' as if he was remarking on the oddity of it. The anonymous inventory of murderous violence is awful enough. But in the pages to come, we do learn the names and the life stories of some of the people who died on Utoya that day ... We learn their dreams. We meet their parents, and in time we feel their families’ grief.
The book begins a bit woodenly, but the translation grows on the reader, and begins to flow more smoothly as the story proceeds as does the narrative about the victims’ lives before the murders ... What we do know after reading this engrossing book is the heartbreak of the victims. We glimpse the unspeakable sadness of the bereaved. We glimpse the psychopathology of a madman, without understanding it. Would that this were the last time for such glimpses.
