2 out of 5

It’s about a school shooting.  And I’m horribly jaded because I guess I don’t feel there’s much else to say in this scene.  Other works have assessed the idea from various points of view; Lydia Fitzpatrick decides to take a fly-on-the-wall tactic, which is appreciated over something that attempts poignancy or moralization, but the perspective hopping – around a class of children being hidden by their gym teacher – doesn’t amount to much.  As I’ve criticized about the One Storys I haven’t dug as much, ‘Safety’ feels more like a writing assignment then an evolved short tale.  The “voices” of the characters are definitely convincing, but structurally it bopped around a bit much before focusing on a shooter and a particular child, needing that extra anchor to give it an actual conclusion, whereas carrying the careening POV through to the end might’ve randomized the event a bit more, giving it a certain type of impact.  Alternately, expanding the story to give these characters more weight (the story’s a short 14 pages) could’ve had an impact as well.  It is not, by any means, poorly written, I just did not become engendered to any of the characters, and had difficulty feeling like there was actually a reason for the topic beyond its topicality seeming like an interesting setting.

Again, my harshness in the rating probably reflects my jadedness toward the topic.  For another POV, I enjoyed Uwe Boll’s Rampage (sympathy for the shooter), and the current (second) season of Murder in the First – so 2015, very recent – deals with a school bus shooting, and while it reeks of sensationalism, its follow-through with its characters has been interesting.