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WORK TITLE: Only Child
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1978
WEBSITE: https://www.rhiannonnavin.com
CITY:
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: German
Married with three children.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1978, in Germany; married; children: three.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Advertising, writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Bremen, Germany, Rhiannon Navin worked in advertising at several large agencies in New York City. She has published the 2018 novel, Only Child, inspired by the fear her five-year-old son experienced being taught school lockdown procedures in the event of a school shooting. In the book, six-year-old first grader Zach Taylor survived a school shooting incident by hiding in a closet with his teacher. However, his older brother Andy was killed. Zach narrates the story, expressing his feelings of loss over his brother, and the neglect from his grieving parents—his mother’s nervous breakdown and his father’s infidelity. Zach copes by siting in his brother’s closet reading books. When his parents decide to sue the parents of the shooter, Zach emerges to bring compassion to the scared adults around him. “Those who can handle the difficult subject matter will find the plot to be a page-turner,” declared a writer in Publishers Weekly who added that Navin excels in capturing little Zach’s perspective.
In an interview with Sarah Hughes online at the Guardian, Navin explained that the frustration from any gun control reform after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 led her to write the novel. Navin said: “I began to hope that I might be able to help other parents in a similar position and allow them to work through their grief—because I think we all feel grief over what is happening in this country.” Writing on the Pan Macmillan Website, Navin explained the difficulties of modern parents to protect their children: “As parents, we already have a long list of worries and fears for our children that keep us up at night. We shouldn’t have to add ‘my child could be gunned down at school’ to that list.”
Irish Times Online reviewer John Boyne felt that the father’s affair in the story was an unnecessary subplot and that the mother’s simple statement about keeping guns out of the wrong hands was a throwaway, empty line. Boyne concluded: “If writers are going to use fiction to explore their pain, then it needs to be approached in a much more thoughtful, politically astute and, above all, courageous fashion.” On the other hand, noting how Navin adds layers of complexity in the political and emotional consequences of gun violence, Poornima Apte commented in Booklist: “Navin explores the intersection between violence and mental illness in this important and timely book.”
Navin shared how she created the characters in her book with Michel Martin online at All Things Considered. First take an average family with normal stressful situations “and toss them into a situation where they have to face the most unspeakable, horrifying tragedy for their family and they’re going to act like humans and they are going to make mistakes and their grief is going to make them do things that they never thought they would do,” said Navin.
“Only Child doesn’t try to reckon with the political or racial aspects of mass shootings, and its sole focus on a wealthy family is a drawback. But tapping into one child’s well-rendered inner experience of such an event is valuable,” noted USA Today reviewer Emily Gray Tedrowe. Navin explained that she used her own children as a focus group so she could write a narrator as young as Zach. She wrote on the Ingram Content blog: “The process of discovering Zach’s character and writing his story brought me closer to them because I paid more attention and watched them intently for clues: What are they thinking right now?” According to Ann Hood in the Washington Post: “It takes great skill to maintain the voice of such a young child believably for the length of an entire novel. … For the most part, Navin manages to make Zach’s voice heartbreakingly believable.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2017, review of Only Child.
Publishers Weekly, November 27, 2017, review of Only Child, p. 28.
USA Today, February 6, 2018, Emily Gray Tedrowe, review of Only Child, p. 04D.
Washington Post, February 15, 2018, Ann Hood, review of Only Child.
ONLINE
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (February 25, 2018), Sarah Hughes, author interview.
Ingram Content, https://www.ingramcontent.com/ (January 10, 2018), “Meet Only Child Author Rhiannon Navin.”
Irish Times Online, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (March 3, 2018), John Boyne, review of Only Child.
NPR/All Things Considered, https://www.npr.org/ (February 18, 2018), Michel Martin, author interview.
Pan Macmillan Website, https://www.panmacmillan.com/ (January 8, 2018), Rhiannon Navin, “Rhiannon Navin on her Debut Novel, Only Child.”
Rhiannon Navin Website, https://www.rhiannonnavin.com (May 1, 2018), author profile.
About Rhiannon Navin
Rhiannon Navin grew up in Bremen, Germany, in a family of book-crazy women. Her career in advertising brought her to New York City, where she worked for several large agencies before becoming a full-time mother and writer. She now lives outside of New York City with her husband, three children, two cats, and one dog. Only Child is her first novel.
Rhiannon Navin: ‘My son’s lockdown fears inspired school shootings novel’
By Sarah Hughes
Author of Only Child discusses her acclaimed, and all too timely, debut work
Sat 24 Feb 2018 19.04 EST Last modified on Sat 24 Feb 2018 19.14 EST
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Rhiannon Navin, whose novel Only Child deals with the aftermath of a school shooting. She was inspired to write after her own children were taught how to behave during a school lockdown.
Rhiannon Navin, whose novel Only Child deals with the aftermath of a school shooting. She was inspired to write after her own children were taught how to behave during a school lockdown. Photograph: Michael Lionstar
For tragic reasons, there will be no more timely book release this year. In the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, American attitudes to gun control again made headlines across the world, as students challenged politicians to act to restrict access to firearms.
The moral force of their argument will be underlined by the UK publication next month of a much-praised debut novel telling the story of an American school shooting through the eyes of a six-year-old survivor.
Rhiannon Navin’s Only Child has been described in the Washington Post as “a breathtaking novel of grief and recovery”, drawing comparisons to Emma Donoghue’s Room and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
The 40-year-old author was inspired to write it after her five-year-old twins were taught how to behave during a school lockdown only a few weeks after beginning kindergarten.
“They were taken through the entire experience: lock the door, turn off the lights, pull down the shades and tell the children hide in the closet, under the desk, in the bathroom. Later that day I found my little guy, Garrett, hiding under the dining room table. I thought maybe he’d had a row with his sister, but he said: ‘I’m hiding from the bad guy, mama.’ He wouldn’t come out until I went under the table and gave him a hug.”
This experience, coupled with the subsequent failure of gun control reform after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, led Navin to wonder if a novel on the subject might help other parents who were feeling as concerned and frightened as she was.
“You just feel so incredibly helpless and outraged about the situation in schools right now,” she says. “You want your children to be learning about maths and science and worrying about who to sit next to for lunch, not is someone coming to school to shoot me today?”
Only Child is told from the point of view of Zach, six, whose seemingly secure world is blown apart by the tragedy as his parents struggle to come to term with his older brother Andy’s death. Prior to writing it, Navin, an advertising executive turned full-time mother, had never dreamed of becoming a novelist.
“When I first started writing I had no notion of it being published – I was writing for myself and didn’t imagine that anyone else would read it,” she says. “But then I finished it and it found a publisher and I began to hope that I might be able to help other parents in a similar position and allow them to work through their grief – because I think we all feel grief over what is happening in this country.
“My intention in writing the book was to offer hope to people who feel as scared as I did.”
An active campaigner in grassroots anti-gun groups such as Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America and Indivisible, Navin is convinced that the conversation is changing.
“We’re up against a really powerful, wealthy, greedy powerhouse [in the National Rifle Association] and these incredibly eloquent teenagers are not backing down. That’s inspiring.”
Only Child is published by Mantle on 8 March, £12.99
'Only Child': A Story of Loss, Grief And Hope
February 18, 20186:00 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
MICHEL MARTIN
Rhiannon Navin, credit Michael Lionstar
Michael Lionstar
In the wake of tragedy, confusing and conflicting feelings like fear and anger can be overwhelming. In her breakout novel, Rihannon Navin takes readers on the emotional journey that explores some of these feelings.
Only Child centers around a family reconciling with the aftermath of a mass shooting at an elementary school. It's told from the perspective of 6-year-old Zach, who survived the shooting in which his brother Andy died.
The book comes in the midst of an American tragedy; just eight days before it was released, a fatal mass shooting at a high school in Florida claimed the lives of 17 people.
NPR's Michel Martin talked to Navin about Only Child and the feeling she hopes the book leaves reader with: hope.
Interview Highlights
On the inspiration behind the novel
It was a very kind of personal experience that I had a few years ago when my twins, who actually turn 8 today, just started kindergarten.
They were 5 years old and they were sitting on the rug and deciphering their first words and just innocent and happy to be there, and then they experienced their first lockdown drill. A voice came over the loudspeaker and said "lockdown" and their teacher locks the door and turns off the lights and ushers them into a closet or instructs them to hide under a desk.
And that same afternoon I found my little guy, Garret, hiding underneath the dining room table. And I said, "Hey, buddy. What are you doing under the table?" And he said, "I'm hiding from the bad guy mommy." And he cowered there and refused to come out so I got under the table with him and held him and he was petrified and I was petrified for him and with him.
And that led me to wonder what that would feel like or look like from the perspective of such a young child to have to live through an actual shooting and the aftermath and everything that comes afterward.
On the writing process
It was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. It was incredibly tough. I had to put myself and my family into that position. I had to envision us in that situation. And that was incredibly draining. But, at the same time it kind of gave me a way to show and to feel how it is to move through this time — without minimizing how hard it is — but come out at the other end feeling a sense of hope and a way to look towards the future.
Only Child
by Rhiannon Navin
On creating the characters
I wanted to show an average family. A regular family — like my family — that deals with everyday problems. Being married under the best of circumstances is difficult. Having children under the best of circumstances is difficult. And then you take this average family that deals with all the normal things and toss them into a situation where they have to face the most unspeakable, horrifying tragedy for their family and they're going to act like humans and they are going to make mistakes and their grief is going to make them do thing that they never thought they would do — and they wouldn't want to do, but they're grieving and they're terrified and sometimes they're lashing out.
On what she learned on the journey
I hope that the story that I told and that the perspective that I chose will remind all of us – I know it reminded me – of the emotional depth and wisdom that our children and our young people possess and that they have to share e if we take the time to listen
I hope that even though my book is incredibly hard for some people to read that after my readers grieve with Zach and his family that they feel hope and that they feel energized maybe and driven by this hope and discover that there's a chance that we come together that we can heal together and move forward and create a safer future for our children.
NPR's Digital News intern Asia Simone Burns produced this story for the Web. NPR's Tyler Hill and NPR's Ammad Omar edited and produced this story for broadcast.
Meet Only Child Author Rhiannon Navin
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Author of ROOM and THE GIRLS, Rhiannon Navin is back with her new book, Only Child, debuting February 6, 2018. This tenderhearted novel follows Zach, a seven-year-old boy, through a life-altering event.
After experiencing a school shooting, Zach and his family's lives have changed forever. While his mother seeks justice, Zach sets out on a journey filled with healing, forgiveness, and wisdom. He is determined to help adults find compassion and universal love again. Rhiannon uses this young boys perspective to remind the reader that, although little, children can impact those around them.
With only a month until release, Rhiannon discusses her writing process and her inspiration for ONLY CHILD.
Q: Was there any specific event in your life or idea that gave rise to ONLY CHILD?
A: Shortly after my twins Frankie and Garrett started kindergarten two years ago, they experienced their first lockdown drill at school. That same afternoon, I found Garrett hiding from the “bad guy” underneath our dining room table. That crushed me. I am a mom of three young children and the shooting at Sandy Hook left me reeling. That morning, when twenty-year-old Adam Lanza marched into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed twenty children and six adults, I had dropped my oldest son Samuel off at school like I did every day. Samuel was in first grade then — the same age as many of the young victims — and until that horrifying day I believed his school was a safe place for him.
Since then, every single time I walk up to my children’s school, a quick “what if?” crosses my mind: What if a shooter tries to get in through the front door? Why is the back gate open; what if an intruder got in through there? As parents, we already have a long list of worries and fears for our children that keep us up at night. We shouldn’t have to add “my child could be gunned down at school” to that list. I am heartbroken that our children are growing up in a world where they have to learn how to hide from “bad guys.”
Q: Did you always know you would tell this story in Zach’s voice?
A: Yes, from the very beginning. When I found Garrett hiding under the table from the “bad guy,” I began to wonder: What would it be like for him to have to live through an actual shooting? And how would he navigate what came afterwards? I wanted ONLY CHILD to offer an authentic, but unencumbered look at the devastating effect a horrific crime like a school shooting can have on those who are forced to live through it, and those who are left behind: the siblings, parents, family and friends. I chose the point of view of a young child deliberately because I believed it would offer a chance to tell the story in a way that wouldn’t be skewed or biased in any way. I didn’t want my own views regarding gun control to bleed into the story; I wanted readers to come away with their own conclusions. Zach’s a thinker, an observer; his wheels are always turning. He takes in so much of what goes on around him.
Even when you’re certain he couldn’t possibly have overheard a conversation, guess what? He heard every word. And he processes situations, emotions and information in such an innocent, yet often incredibly wise way. So, I put myself in his shoes and began to imagine the story.
Q: What were the particular challenges (and joys) of writing such a young narrator?
A: While writing ONLY CHILD, I used my own kids as my focus group for how Zach might act or speak. In a way, the process of discovering Zach’s character and writing his story brought me closer to them because I paid more attention and watched them intently for clues: What are they thinking right now? How are they processing, expressing themselves? I call my kids by the wrong name all the time—even the cats’ names sometimes—and because I hung out with Zach so much while they were at school, I even called them Zach once or twice. They were very confused.
I have to say that I enjoyed spending so much time with Zach. Even though his situation is so heartbreaking, it was amazing to watch him use the resources of a six-year-old boy to put himself, and eventually the adults in his life, on a path to recovery and healing. But writing from Zach’s point of view was challenging, too. I had to make sure he sounded authentic and believable, but at the same time his voice had to be compelling enough for adult readers to want to spend the entire three-hundred pages with him without growing tired of hearing his voice. Another challenge was to get enough of the plot points and background information across to keep the story moving along without feeling forced or jammed in. Through Zach, the reader had to find out important information about the shooting and overhear enough interactions between the adults to understand what was going on beyond Zach’s little horizon.
Q: Tell us a little about the colors Zach uses to describe his feelings and how they inform the novel.
A: I’m a very visual, creative person and to me it’s like Zach says: “the colors come attached to the feelings.” I intuitively gravitated towards art and the use of paint and colors when I tried to imagine how Zach might try to navigate his confusing and lonely situation after the shooting. The adults in his life are initially unable to support him in the way he needs because they grapple with their own grief in different, all-consuming ways, and he therefore becomes very self-sufficient. The scene where Zach begins to paint his “feelings pages” is a central scene in my story. It is the moment Zach begins to find ways, on his own, to confront the trauma he’s experienced and deal with his conflicting and confusing emotions. Once Zach discovers that he can separate his feelings instead of having them “all mixed up,” they seem more manageable to him, easier to tackle one by one. He is able to do something the adults cannot: understand that every feeling is important and valid.
Q: Zach is helped by a community larger than his immediate family--his teacher, who gives him a special locket, his aunt, and even (unexpectedly) Charlie, the gunman’s father. How does the world outside his home help him heal?
A: Zach’s parents are caught up in their own grief and unable to give him what he needs in the time immediately after the shooting. But there are other adults in his life who reach out to him and support him in different ways. Zach has a special bond with his teacher, Miss Russell, because they both survived a terrifying, traumatic situation together. Miss Russell gives Zach a symbolic gift that comforts him and helps him as he contemplates the concept of an existence after death. His Aunt Mary is part of his immediate family and witnesses firsthand how the situation in Zach’s home deteriorates rapidly. She is a steady, reassuring presence in his life and steps up in some of his darkest and loneliest moments to provide him with the warmth and support he needs. The empathy Zack feels for Charlie is the catalyst for much of the healing that takes place in my story. It helps Zach himself because he is able to forgive Charlie and eventually lead by example and teach his parents that the key to healing is not hate and vengeance, but love and compassion.
Q: This is your first novel. How long have you been writing?
A: ONLY CHILD was my first real foray into the world of writing. I have dabbled with writing here and there since I was in high school. In Germany, you pick two “majors” in high school and mine were German and English literature. An avid reader my whole life, authors are like rock stars to me. I always admired them from afar, but never seriously considered trying my hand at writing myself. I guess it took something that really rattled me to the core to open up the floodgates. It was like this story was already there, waiting for me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I sat down one day and wrote down the opening scene of Zach hiding in his classroom closet in one sitting. The scene just flowed out of me. I scribbled furiously, in one of my kids’ school notebooks, barely coming up for air. And just liked that I was hooked. Writing for me really came along at the perfect time. I struggled with being a full-time stay-at-home mom. I had made a conscious decision to put my career in advertising on hold to be home with my kids, and I consider myself extremely fortunate that our family is able to afford the luxury of a stay-at-home parent. But my brain was craving more, and every time someone asked, “So, what do you do all day?” I died a little bit on the inside. Now I can’t imagine anything I’d rather be doing while my kids are at school.
Q: ONLY CHILD definitely celebrates the power of books. The Magic Tree House books are Zach’s favorites. Why did you decide to include those books as part of the novel? And what were some of the books that you most loved as a child?
A: The Magic Tree House books are some of my kids’ favorite books. We’ve read through the entire series twice in my house, first when my older son, Samuel, was starting to read, and then a second time when the twins were old enough. Mary Pope Osborne created a series that truly is magical, and my kids loved discovering new worlds or different time periods with Jack and Annie. Her books sparked many great conversations in our house and my kids have learned so much from them. When I first started writing ONLY CHILD, I wasn’t planning on including the Magic Tree House books. That is something that happened organically. As Zach began to retreat to his hideout and to find ways to cope with his feelings, books occurred to me as a natural outlet for him because books can be such a great escape sometimes. You dive into another world and get to sample someone else’s life, and you (hopefully) emerge hav- ing learned something that you didn’t know or haven’t considered before. In addition to escaping his emotional and confusing life for a little while, Zach discovered valuable lessons in the Magic Tree House books that he wanted to try to apply to his own situation. I did not know the Magic Tree House books as a child. Growing up in Germany, I mostly read books by German authors such as Janosch, Paul Maar, and Judith Kerr. I devoured anything written by Astrid Lindgren. The Pippi Longstocking books are still some of my favorites.
Q: Your bio say that you “grew up in a family of book-crazy women.” Tell us about that.
A: My parents divorced when I was four years old and I grew up primarily with my mom and my younger sister. My mom was a teacher and she really is the most book-crazy person I’ve ever met. I also have two older half-sisters who are avid readers and my stepmom and stepsister, who came into my life a few years after my parents divorced, read constantly, too. So I was surrounded by many women and many, many books! Every wall in our apartment was lined with bookshelves and every birthday and Christmas meant a new stack of books as presents. Before I could read on my own, my mom read to us for hours at bedtime, and then I went on to devour books on my own at a rapid pace. I remember camping vacations on various islands in the North Sea where we would bring one suitcase for clothes and one for books. I am eternally grateful to my mom for instilling the love for reading in me. She is in her mid-seventies now and when she’s not busy singlehandedly teaching every refugee in Germany how to read and write in German, she regularly makes the trip to the U.S. to visit her grandchildren and hand-deliver all the new German children’s books to them, and to visit all her favorite bookstores in New York City.
Book World: Another school shooting. Another shattered community. A 6-year-old survivor
Ann Hood
The Washington Post. (Feb. 15, 2018): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Ann Hood
Only Child
By Rhiannon Navin
Knopf. 288 pp. $25.95
- - -
"The thing I later remembered the most about the day the gunman came was my teacher Miss Russell's breath."
With a dozen school shootings in the first month of this year - and yet another one on Wednesday - these words could be spoken by a student in Benton, Kentucky, or Los Angeles or from any of the other school shootings that have occurred in the United States since 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.
But this narrator is Zach Taylor, a first-grader hiding in a closet with his teacher and the rest of his class during a shooting in Rhiannon Navin's breathtaking novel, "Only Child." "We kept hearing the POP sounds outside. And screaming. POP POP POP. It sounded a lot like the sounds from the Star Warsgame I sometimes play on the Xbox." This juxtaposition of violence and childhood innocence is what separates the story from novels such as Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and Laura Kasischke's "The Life Before Her Eyes."Our guide through this tale of violence is 6 years old.
Zach is shuttled out of the school and into a nearby church where anxious parents go to look for their children. His mother finally arrives, but her relief at finding Zach unharmed is quickly replaced by the realization that her older son, Andy, is not there. Soon, we learn that Andy was one of the victims, and it is left to Zach to navigate the enormous landscape of grief in which his family finds itself.
Typically, mothers and fathers deal differently with the loss of their child, and Navin sends Zach's parents on their separate trajectories. When his mother learns that the shooter was the son of the school's beloved security guard, Charlie, she focuses her rage on him and his wife, forming an action group with the parents of other victims and giving television interviews. At first, Zach's father indulges her, while he turns his attention to his surviving son. Each morning he drives Zach to the school where the children have been relocated, and each morning Zach decides he isn't ready to return.
As his parents' relationship begins to fray - Zach calls their fights "thunderstorms" - Zach takes refuge in his brother's closet, in painting pictures of his feelings and in sitting "crisscross applesauce" as he rereads books from Mary Pope Osborne's "Magic Tree House" series. Zach is left alone to sort out his complicated feelings about his brother, whose bad behavior caused friction at home. At first, Zach is relieved that Andy died and his life of sibling torture has ended. But that relief turns to wistful conversations whispered to Andy, wondering why he'd been so mean, and eventually leading Zach to read from the "Magic Tree House" to his dead brother.
It takes great skill to maintain the voice of such a young child believably for the length of an entire novel. Emma Donoghue did it successfully with 5-year-old Jack in "Room," as did Jonathan Safran Foer in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," narrated by 9-year-old Oskar. For the most part, Navin manages to make Zach's voice heartbreakingly believable, as when he tells us: "The gunman came and real life went away, and now it was like we were in a new fake life."
Any reader who has experienced grief - which is to say, everyone - will recognize that sense of being in a place that has halted even as the world around her continues to, unbelievably, keep moving. Zach describes that dislocated feeling just as a child would, and the strength in his point of view made me forgive the occasional slip, as when he repeats with complete accuracy the complicated shouts of the police in the aftermath of the shooting - "Femoral bleed. Get me a pressure dressing and a tourniquet!"
Old wounds are revealed as Zach's parents struggle with their loss. Ultimately, it is left to Zach to put what is left of his family back together. I would have liked a bit less "Magic Tree House" and even more attention to the pitfalls and potholes of a grieving family. The plot becomes perhaps too facile as loose ends are tied up and these parents who have lost their son in the most horrible way begin to move forward too quickly. Only a few months after Andy was murdered in his fifth-grade classroom, the Taylors seem like parents much further along in their recovery. One can't help but think of the parents of the young victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who remind us six years later of the toll such violence takes.
But ultimately, "Only Child" triumphs. Zach, at only 6 years old, understands more about the human heart than the broken adults around him. His hope and optimism as he sets out to execute his plan will have every reader cheering him on, and believing in happy endings even in the face of such tragedy.
- - -
Hood is the author of 17 books, including "The Book That Matters Most" and the memoir "Comfort: A Journey Through Grief."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hood, Ann. "Book World: Another school shooting. Another shattered community. A 6-year-old survivor." Washington Post, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527687064/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4ddf4515. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527687064
A mass-shooting horror through a first-grader's lens
Emily Gray Tedrowe
USA Today. (Feb. 6, 2018): Lifestyle: p04D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Emily Gray Tedrowe, Special to USA TODAY
Yes, at times it's hard to read. When you pick up Rhiannon Navin's debut novel, Only Child (Knopf, 288 pp., ***), which tells the story of a Sandy Hook-like mass school shooting from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy who loses his brother, you'll probably wince in painful recognition.
After all, the madness of gun violence in America is still front and center in 2018. Many readers might hesitate before committing to a novel that asks you to deeply imagine one family's terror and heartbreak during and after such an event.
But Only Child earns its worth by avoiding gratuitous scenes of horror in favor of a careful examination of the way one boy and his parents, and their community, struggle to survive -- and stay together -- after the worst has happened.
"When we practiced lockdown drill before, it was fun," Zach thinks. But when Zach's first-grade teacher crowds his class into a closet, it's crammed and hot and confusing. There are pops from the hallway and voices screaming.
One of Navin's strongest techniques is to evoke Zach's experience with vivid sensory details -- Miss Russell's acrid coffee breath, the warmth of pee in his pant legs, the way his parents' bodies shake later while they hug him.
Soon the town -- a New York-area suburb standing in for Newtown, Conn. -- learns that 19 children have been killed, including Zach's older brother, Andy, by the troubled son of the school's beloved longtime security guard.
Zach is plunged into his family's sorrow and is caught between the different ways his parents react to the loss. While his father, a lawyer at a big firm, offers comfort and connection, Zach's mother can't escape her anger and begins to pull away from the family in an effort to rally other survivors against the shooter's parents.
Over the next few months, Zach suffers nightmares and a fear of returning to school, and he worries about his parents' arguments. It doesn't help that Andy's behavior problems, which were hard on the whole family, complicate their grief.
Delivering the whole of this fraught situation through the perceptions of a child is difficult, and at times the necessary simplifying of Zach's understanding doesn't serve the story.
Navin also can veer into unwieldy -- and unpersuasive --exposition that feels shoehorned into Zach's awareness in order to convey information. Why would his mother bother making beds every morning? he wonders, "but Mommy says that's the old type A account director in her." Zach's love for reading the Magic SchoolBus series provides a lovely opportunity to be inside a child's mind as he works through challenging emotions.
Only Child doesn't try to reckon with the political or racial aspects of mass shootings, and its sole focus on a wealthy family is a drawback. But tapping into one child's well-rendered inner experience of such an event is valuable, and all too sadly important for our world today.
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Tedrowe, Emily Gray. "A mass-shooting horror through a first-grader's lens." USA Today, 6 Feb. 2018, p. 04D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526634481/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bb8553be. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526634481
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Only Child
Poornima Apte
Booklist.
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Full Text:
Only Child.
By Rhiannon Navin.
Feb. 2018.304p. Knopf, $25.95 (9781524733353); e-book (9781524733360).
Things were bad enough in the Taylor household even before unthinkable tragedy struck. Before Andy
Taylor was gunned down at his elementary school, he was afflicted by oppositional defiant disorder, which
leads to violent tempers, and Dad had been having an affair with a neighbor. Now that Andy is gone, one of
19 confirmed dead in the attack, his family, including Andy's younger brother, Zach, are understandably
having difficulty coping with the aftermath of searing loss. First-grader Zach narrates Navin's
heartwrenching debut, and his innocent voice effectively grounds the story. He watches as his mother
launches a mission in pursuit of justice, and as his parents grow increasingly distant from each other. As
Zach struggles to make sense of the increasing "thunderstorms" between Mom and Dad, leaning on the
Magic Tree House books and the Hulk to give him some perspective, Navin adds layers of (occasionally
cloying) complexity. Navin explores the intersection between violence and mental illness in this important
and timely book.--Poornima Apte
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Apte, Poornima. "Only Child." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2018, p. 38. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525185578/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=23e097e8.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525185578
4/23/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Navin, Rhiannon: ONLY CHILD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Dec. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Navin, Rhiannon ONLY CHILD Knopf (Adult Fiction) $25.95 2, 6 ISBN: 978-1-5247-3335-3
The aftermath of a school shooting, told from the point of view of a first-grader who hid with his class in a
closet while his 10-year-old brother and 18 others were massacred.
"The thing I later remembered the most about the day the gunman came was my teacher Miss Russell's
breath. It was hot and smelled like coffee....POP POP POP. It sounded a lot like the sounds from the Star
Wars game I sometimes play on the Xbox." Like Emma Donoghue's Room, Navin's debut takes the risk of
narrating a gruesome modern tragedy in the voice of a very young player. At 6, Zach Taylor comes only
slowly to understand what has happened that day at school. He is with his mother at the hospital waiting to
see if his brother, Andy, is among the wounded when his father arrives. "Daddy's face was like a grayish
color, and his mouth looked all funny, with his lower lip pulled down so I could see his teeth....First
Mommy's eyes got really big, and then her whole self started shaking and she started acting crazy. She
yelled, 'Jim? Oh my God, no no no no no no no no no!'" Because Andy had oppositional defiant disorder
and was routinely unkind to him, Zach wonders at first if perhaps his death will be an improvement. During
what he perceives as the "party" that goes on at his house after the massacre, he sequesters himself in his
brother's closet and imagines life as an only child. "Like they could both come to my piano recitals and they
could both stay for the whole time." Soon he sees just how wrong he is, as every cherished ritual of his life
is pitched overboard, his mother changes into someone he doesn't know, and he is tormented by nightmares
and uncontrollable rages. Since his parents are preoccupied to the point of cruelty and don't get him
professional help, he is on his own in figuring out how to cope. His touching tactics include assigning
colors to his feelings and making paintings of them and studying the "secrets of happiness" purveyed in the
Magic Treehouse series. Seems like a lot of people, and not just the ones in this novel, need to reread those
books.
A powerful exercise in empathy and perspective.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Navin, Rhiannon: ONLY CHILD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A516024664/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c5407b72.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A516024664
4/23/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1524530438485 3/3
Only Child
Publishers Weekly.
264.48 (Nov. 27, 2017): p28.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Only Child
Rhiannon Navin. Knopf, $25.95 (304p)
ISBN 978-1-5247-3335-3
Navin's gripping debut opens with first grader Zach Taylor huddling in a closet with his teacher and
classmates while shots and screams echo in his school's corridors. After the shooting, Zach's parents'
frantically search for Andy, Zach's older brother, only to discover that he is one of the victims. Zach's
gradual comprehension of the tragedy includes his bewilderment when people bring food to his house,
which he thinks of as an unseemly party. As he works through his memories of Andy, he comes to an aching
realization of the depth of his loss. His parents are too preoccupied with their own grief to notice Zach's
anguish or to bring him to therapy. He takes refuge in books, reading hidden in Andy's bedroom closet, and
is the bystander to his mother's nervous volatility and his father's adulterous liaison. When his mother
resolves to bring a lawsuit against the parents of the boy who wielded the gun, in spite of the fact that the
two families have had a longtime friendly relationship, Zach conceives a dangerous "mission" to bring
healing to his parents and the community. Those who can handle the difficult subject matter will find the
plot to be a page-turner; Navin also excels in brilliantly capturing Zach's perspective. 125,000-copy
announced first printing. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Only Child." Publishers Weekly, 27 Nov. 2017, p. 28. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517575615/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ec2baf46.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517575615
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin review – troubling book about school shooting
Great child’s perspective of massacre but author cowardly on US gun control
John Boyne
Sat, Mar 3, 2018, 06:00
Last month, 17 people, 14 of them children, were killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, leading to the latest in a series of empty promises from US politicians that something must change with regard to gun laws. The worst such incident remains the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, when 20 children and six adults were murdered. The events of that tragedy are mirrored in the opening pages of Only Child when a gunman – the same age as the Sandy Hook gunman – enters a school and kills 19 students and staff.
One of the survivors, seven-year-old Zach Taylor, is the narrator of this deeply problematic novel. His older brother, Andy, is one of the victims and we follow Zach’s story as he and his parents struggle to cope with their loss, particularly his mother Melissa, who begins a crusade of vengeance against the killer’s parents.
There have been many novels narrated by naive young characters since Emma Donoghue’s triumphant Room, and school shootings have featured in DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Last year, another American writer, Gin Phillips, published an effective thriller, Fierce Kingdom, in which a mother and her son are trapped inside a zoo while gunmen roam the grounds.
The strength of Only Child lies in Zach’s voice, which is authentic and moving. It’s not easy to write a child that young and make him interesting to adult readers but he has the right balance of charm, innocence and wisdom to make him an appealing narrator, one for whom the reader roots. His disintegrating relationship with his parents is well-drawn and Navin makes a wise choice in allowing Zach to feel conflicted about his feelings for his dead brother, who bullied him relentlessly. He’s glad that things at home might be better without him but, of course, he also suffers tremendous guilt at such selfishness.
Unnecessary subplot
His parents too are engaging, although a subplot involving an earlier affair between Jim, Zach’s father, and the mother of one of the murdered children feels unnecessary for it’s both underdeveloped and seems out of character for a man who is consistently gentle with his wife and son.
However, despite the compelling nature of the narrative, the novel is ultimately undermined by a fatal flaw that makes it almost obscene in its insensitivity. For despite the terrible body count and the fact that the killer was carrying four guns, there is not a single reference anywhere to gun control or the destructive effect that rifles and pistols have in the States. Indeed, when Melissa’s campaign of retribution begins, she completely ignores the gun lobby, the NRA and retailers who sell firearms to unstable people, focusing her fury instead on the innocent parents of the killer, an emotional response that strains credibility.
There’s a moral cowardice to a novel that draws on the suffering of others to build its plot while completely ignoring the catalyst for that pain. One wishes that authors would take a position – any position – regarding America’s relationship with guns, even if that results in a commercial backlash. Navin avoids antagonising a large portion of her potential readership by not engaging with the second amendment but one could argue that this represents an abdication of responsibility on her part.
No bravery
In the closing pages of the book, Melissa finally makes a throwaway comment about helping to “keep guns from ending up in the wrong hands” but it’s such an empty line, and appears so late, that it feels like something an editor has thrown in at the last minute to avoid criticism. Which is a shame because this is the first novel I’ve read on this theme written from a young child’s perspective and a discussion about guns, initiated from a position of innocence, could have made for a remarkable debut.
I appreciated so much about Only Child that it’s a pity to offer such criticism but a writer exploring as important an issue as this needs to be brave and there is simply no bravery on display here. By the time the sentimental ending arrives, we’re deep into Jodi Picoult territory and all the power of the opening 100 pages has been lost.
One can only feel sympathy for the families of victims of these atrocities but if writers are going to use fiction to explore their pain, then it needs to be approached in a much more thoughtful, politically astute and, above all, courageous fashion.
John Boyne’s latest novel is The Heart’s Invisible Furies (Doubleday)
Rhiannon Navin on her debut novel, Only Child
08 January 2018
Rhiannon Navin’s Only Child confronts one of the most terrifying scenarios a parent can ever face, and is fast becoming one of the most talked about debut novels of 2018. Here, Rhiannon shares how she came to write the book.
My debut novel, Only Child is a story that poured directly from my heart. I am a writer, yes, but first and foremost I am a mother of three young children. I worry about them -- about their health, their safety, their happiness -- and that, of course, puts me in the same boat as every other parent in the world.
One of my biggest fears is that my children might be hurt in a school shooting and that there would be nothing that I, as their mother, can do to protect them. I want to tell you about a very personal experience that ultimately gave rise to the book you hold in your hands now. Shortly after my five-year-old twins Frankie and Garrett started school, they participated in their first lockdown drill. Lockdown drills are common here in the U.S.; children and teachers have to practice what to do if a gunman enters the school. That same afternoon, I found my little Garrett hiding from the “bad guy” underneath our dining room table, petrified.
That crushed me and I am heartbroken that our children are growing up in a world where they have to learn how to hide from “bad guys."
The shooting at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut, almost five years ago left me reeling and every single time I walk up to my children’s school, a quick “What if” crosses my mind: what if a shooter tried to get in through the front door? Why is the back gate open, what if an intruder got in through there? As parents, we already have a long list of worries and fears for our children that keep us up at night. We shouldn’t have to add “my child could be gunned down at school” to that list.
I want to help bring about change and I want to contribute to the conversation about gun safety in a meaningful way. I am part of the Indivisible movement here in the U.S. and we are collaborating closely with Moms Demand Action, a nonpartisan grassroots network of mothers that works tirelessly to prevent gun violence and to make America a safer place for our children. Volunteering my time and energy this way gives me an opportunity to channel my fear and outrage over this threat my children are facing into something productive, something that can make a difference and prevent such tragic loss from happening to more families.
I wrote Only Child out of fear and worry -- but also with great hope for a safer future for our children. Because although on the face of it, Only Child is a story of devastating loss and heartbreak, it is also -- and most importantly -- a story of love and compassion, forgiveness, and healing.
And that's a story we all need to tell right now.