One of the most crucial questions A Mother’s Reckoning poses is whether the lessons we can take from such crimes are most visible to those who have known—and loved—their perpetrators ... Sue Klebold, in the course of both the period of her life that A Mother’s Reckoning details and the book itself, remains utterly determined to resist easy answers. At heart, the book is not a portrait of Dylan, but a portrait of Sue Klebold’s grief, because her grief has taught her that Dylan will always be, in some ways, unknowable.
[A Mother's Reckoning] reads as if she had written it under oath, while trying to answer, honestly and completely, an urgent question: What could a parent have done to prevent this tragedy? ... This is writing as action, bursting from a life so choked by circumstance that she could express that sentiment only from within the safety of a 300-page book.
Reading this book as a critic is hard; reading it as a parent is devastating. I imagine snippets of my own young children in Dylan Klebold, shades of my parenting in Sue and Tom. I suspect that many families will find their own parallels. This book’s insights are painful and necessary, and its contradictions inevitable.
A Mother’s Reckoning implicates the reader in its own search for understanding; it’s part confessional, part grief-memoir, part apology and part activist literature ... It’s hard to criticise a book that so earnestly and willingly embraces self-exposure. And yet there are many places in the book where it’s hard to believe she couldn’t see past the face Dylan was presenting.
These conclusions might be consoling to Klebold, who in her '20/20’' interview had trouble using the word 'killed' to describe what her son did (and in the book she avoids details of the attack). They might even be consoling to the victims. But she offers little support that seems persuasive.
This—seeing herself as a suicide-loss survivor first and foremost—is the most egregious aspect of the book ... Sue, we don’t find you responsible for the massacre at Columbine High School. But we don’t want to hear any more about your survival mechanisms, or your work on behalf of 'brain health,' or your gastrointestinal issues, or the feeling you had on the day Dylan was born that a big dark bird of prey was passing overhead ... We just wish you hadn’t written this offensive, self-serving, mendacious mephitic book.
Throughout, Sue Klebold is articulate, thorough and thoughtful. Her agenda? At least in part to redeem herself, if not Dylan, in our eyes, though the line gets necessarily fuzzy ... But Klebold writes as if to convince herself. And how to fault her? How not to wonder instead how she has managed to survive.
This book, which can be tough to read in places, is an important one. It helps us arrive at a new understanding of how Columbine happened—and, in the process, may help avert other tragedies.
A Mother’s Reckoning ultimately shines most as a vehicle for humanizing Klebold herself: as a compelling story about the perseverance of a mother trying to survive under some of the most unthinkable and extraordinary of circumstances, reminding us that both sides of any tragedy, no matter the scale and barbarity, are often more complicated than they seem.
At times Klebold's book is so chilling you want to turn away, but her compassion, honesty – and realization that parents and programs must work to discover kids' hidden suffering – will keep you riveted.
