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Aug 01, 2016KABuck rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
A major point of advertisement for this book is its claim to be a remake of the acclaimed movie, The Breakfast Club. After reading Shooter, I have to say that Caroline Pignat has managed to go beyond that. Three decades have passed since the days of The Breakfast Club, and the world in which five kids sat in detention is no more. High school has become a drastically different scene. While a small collection of today's students may still yield that entertaining and edifying variety of problems, styles and perspectives seen in the 80s, the connection between them—one nourished by greater technology, awareness, and twenty-first century social phenomena—has new implications. Shooter captures this evolution with new cliques: princesses, jocks, criminals, nerds and basket cases are replaced by the overlapping hybrids of each other that appear in modern school environments. An attractive, privileged girl is also pressured to constantly achieve success; a neglected troublemaker is also an athlete; an intelligent introvert also deals with problems at home beyond her talents; a boy with social difficulties and unpopular interests is also vulnerable to criminal behaviour; and the student who looks weird, acts weird, and makes people stare has a genuine, medically recognized, and unchangeable uniqueness with which he sees the world. While many young people (including myself) were worried that Shooter would be another teen fiction novel that made Disney characters of our reality and hyperbolized our social complexities, I assure you that Pignat has put together a suspenseful, fluid, creative, and insightful story. She has proven her skill as an observant teacher in laying out the real fabric of many extremes and dire possibilities of contemporary Canadian high school. It all starts with a lockdown, one whose story I recommend you read.