This is just flat-out horrifying. I'm working my way through one of the Goodreads biography lists, and I side-eyed this to be honest. Because you do think it's the family, don't you. They must have done something to produce a kid willing to commit such violence. I was expecting a laundry list of excuses... and there were none. There was also no explanation. Nor, Klebold is at pains to repeat, will there ever be one. Any chance of explanation died with her son.

The really terrifying bit is I believe her when she says she had no clue, and that there was nothing in Dylan's family life that would cause him to commit mass murder. The family seems entirely normal. Klebold comes across a little bit helicopter, to be honest, but not hugely so, and she had no clue. Nor did her husband, nor did their other son, nor did pretty much anyone else in Dylan's social circle, excepting Eric Harris. The kid was just a bomb waiting to go off, and no-one picked up on it, simply because - like many other kids - he hid his problems too well. How mental health plays into tragedies like this is a strong focus of the book, and supplements the emotional tone of it well.

Parenting seems such a crap-shoot anyway. You can work your arse off, do the best you can, and decent results still aren't guaranteed. I'm not a mother, and never intend to be, and stories like this make the prospect seem even less appealing than it already does. The horror and confusion and grief that this woman feels, the sheer overwhelming shame… it's like a train wreck. I couldn't look away. It feels a little bit privileged to judge the prose here, but the prose is certaintly part of that fascination. It's lucid and thoughtful, and the years of groping towards some sort of resolution - one which will surely never come - is well served by this style, I think. It's compulsively readable, and, as I said, absolutely awful.