After

by Francine Prose

This review I'm going to have to do in two parts; the first will be very general, the second much more specific and a review of the entire book which means it will include specific spoilers of what happens.

First, the general review. The first three-quarters of this book were really good. That part is an examination of what happened at one typical high school in response to a Columbine-like shooting at another high school. Restrictions are put on students and more and more rules are passed. The "zero tolerance policy" is in effect for infractions and the students and the teachers are both living in a more and more repressive environment.

That part of the book I liked, but unfortunately the last one-forth of the book goes into something else and takes an excellent psychological examination of the damage done to teenagers by a Columbine-like massacre and adult over-reaction and turns it into a totally illogical, science-fiction/conspiracy type of story. In effect, the last forth of the book almost ruins the first three-fourths.

I would not recommend this book on that basis alone; unless you stop reading after you're three-fourths of the way through you'll end up being terribly disappointed.

Now, for a specific review, this part containing numerous spoilers including the ending, so if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

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The book opens with a Columbine-like shooting at a school some distance away. A "grief counselor" named Dr. Willner is brought in to supposedly help the students deal with the tragedy at the other school.

What ends up happening is an ever-growing police state in the high school. The school begins to have all students go through metal detectors as they enter the school. The impracticality of this is shown when the students are almost inevitably late for class due to how long it takes to perform the checks.

If you're never been through a metal detector, it can be strange experience. The book uses in-place detectors, but schools also can have roving groups of checkers with portable detectors who come into a room and check each student one-at-a-time.

Metal detectors are controversial, of course, and if done in a random manner by portable scanners their effectiveness is exactly that, random.

The high school next restricts the type of clothing students can wear, including avoiding the use of the color red since it is a "gang" color. No uniforms are adopted, though. They then move onto random drug testing of athletes and inspection of lockers without the students knowledge or permission.

Chewing gum is totally outlawed, and objections are raised to the types of books and music CDs students have in their lockers, echoing the societal controversy over what students should and shouldn't be allowed to read, censorship of libraries and censorship of music CDs.

One student writes an essay complaining about what is going on and she's told to take the essay home and destroy it. Teachers themselves are put under ever-increasing pressure to monitor students, and even students are encouraged to report "suspicious or illegal behavior" on the part of their classmates.

One teacher is fired for not reporting a student in her class having a cell phone. Students who are particular trouble-makers, according to Dr. Willner, are sent away to an "Operation Turnaround" which is a program that supposedly will improve their behavior, although none of the students sent away ever seem to return.

Which is now getting into the part of the book that becomes absurd. In seems that there is some form of conspiracy (human? alien?) to put virtually all teenagers in the "camps" throughout the country. E-mails from the schools are used to hypnotize parents into not objecting to this. Eventually the central character Tom, his father and his father's girlfriend, two friends of his and the mother of one of them flee the area, hoping to restart somewhat safer (although two of the areas are still in the U.S., Canada being the third option.)

So what was an examination of student reaction to a tightening-up of school rules becomes a story of disappearing students taken by someone or something.

The part of the increased rules is realistic. Random drug testing, unsupervised checking of student lockers and various other things are being done in more and more schools.

The way the students react and the concerns they have, how some students adopt and some object is also realistic and that part of the book could have been developed more. The problem is that the "hypnotized adults" don't object and so what would have realistically happened, (various adults complaining that the "civil rights" of their sons and daughters were being violated) does not happen.

That could have opened a good discussion of civil rights of students versus the "in loco parentis" concept of schools and just how much power should be given a school to control student behavior in order to avoid Columbine-type horrors.

But that's where the book falls dead. Instead, it goes into this "disappearing teenagers at concentration camps" idea with, in the end, some of the main characters fleeing. It's not by coincidence that the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers is referred to several times in the book.

Why concentration camps for teenagers? It doesn't make any sense on so many levels it's not funny. The logistics of doing something like that are almost beyond comprehension. The economic fallout would be incredible, with no teenagers left to by clothing, records, games, cosmetics or anything at all, period. In addition, there would be no teenage workers left and all those jobs would need to be filled by someone. In effect, the economy of the entire country would fall apart.

Why put them there? The book sort of implies that the students are being killed on purpose. Why? It doesn't make any sense at all. If it's aliens (which the movie reference seems to indicate), it would be much simpler to just kill everyone if they want to take over the planet rather than just kill teenagers.

If it's our own government, then again we have to ask why? If the students were being brainwashed or something there would be easier ways to do that then move all the teenagers into the country into these camps.

The people fleeing at the end of the novel is also not realistic. They plan to start over but it's not that simple. Whether or not the conspiracy is our own government or some alien plot, it would be easy to find the people. They have limited money (they got money from their ATMs before leaving), and they would need to get jobs which would lead to the use of their social security numbers and other things which would allow their presence to be detected by whoever or whatever is running the program.

The students would need to enter new schools and that would also alert the people/things running the program about where the students were.

Yes, there were concentration camps in Germany, and maybe the author is taking the point that the same thing could happen here. This would be much harder to do in this case, though, since there are many more teenagers then there were Jews and so there would have to be numerous camps supplied by numerous companies and the idea that this would all be done with total secrecy is absurd.

The "hypnotizing e-mails" point itself is ridiculous. There's no reference made to any programs opened by the e-mails which would then run some kind of actual hypnotizing program (still absurd, yes).

There is also no purpose for the camps given or hinted at. Are teenagers being killed just to be killed? Are they being brainwashed to become perfect members of society? The people in the book don't even speculate as to the why of what is going on.

So, I think this is a book that had a lot of potential to examine reactions to Columbine; it started off well in that direction but it falls apart totally and becomes ridiculous with its unnecessary science-fiction/conspiracy approach. Very disappointing.

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