High school suicide destroys much more than the student who dies — it marks an entire community with grief, anger, and questions. In her last term at a high-end Catholic prep school, Frankie may look like she's got everything she wanted: acceptance into the college she most wanted, her best friend Shivani for life, and a mom who loves her, knows how to let go when needed, and is slowly starting to treat her as an adult.
But she isn't getting over the effects of Kyle's suicide -- and it's the third at her school in her family's history. When Frankie and Shiv opt to dig into one of the other suicides, that of Woolf Whiting, as their community journalism project, the revelations in the community, and even at home, push Frankie through anguish and the kind of fury that can feed a person's growing maturity, too.
Bruno takes a risk in this "crime fiction" by letting loose a literary streak that slows the pace and deepens the emotions. And this author's risk pays off. Maybe it's the kind of approach that suicide deserves: questioning the values of life, from love to religion to forms of truth.
Father Michael had called us "fine young people." How a priest could know what was hidden in the recesses of our teenage hearts was beyond me, but I had no doubts about our collective character.
What troubles me now ... is not that he was wrong about us, but that he was right. We were fine young people. But one day, in the not-so-distant future, we might find ourselves in the midst of some business transaction or political maneuver, in service of someone or some profit, only to find that we have quietly, and perhaps unknowingly, turn a corner and become the adults we had once dismissed with contempt.
So, what are the biggest pitfalls of high school, besides the frictions that can happen between the closest friends? Drugs has to be number one, right? And sex, the kind you fall into when you think you're in love, or when you're more drunk than you realize. The deeper their investigation goes, the more Frankie and Shiv find that high school heroes can be broken, damaged — and at risk of death. But was Woolf's death at his own hand or someone else's? For most of this compelling and emotionally revealing novel, it looks like the answer will never be found. Be a savvy crime-fiction reader, though: Watch for the tiny threads that Frankie overlooks. See whether you can reach the real answer before she does.
That competition for reader versus sleuth may be the heart of the modern mystery genre, and it's where the author's skills are fiercely tested. Anna Bruno gets an A on this one ... maybe even an A-plus, if they're still giving those in Frankie's high-school world.
The book, published by Algonquin, is newly available this week. It will make a terrific book-group book, and raises powerful questions about religion and community as well.
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