How to Be Safe

A Novel

By: Tom McAllister

Narrated by: Amy Landon

Former teacher had motive.

Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works.

Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Gun sales skyrocket, victims are transformed into martyrs, and the rules of public mourning are ruthlessly enforced. Anna decides to wholeheartedly reject the culpability she's somehow been assigned, and the rampant sexism that comes with it, both in person and online.

A piercing feminist howl written in trenchant prose, How to Be Safe is a compulsively listenable, darkly funny expose of the hypocrisy that ensues when illusions of peace are shattered.

©2018 Tom McAllister (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Relevant and Timely

The immediacy is what strikes you. It sounds like it was written the day after Parkland. There are moments of horror and moments of humor...quite a few times when I snorted out loud at a turn of a phrase...but mostly numb sadness and loss. This is America.

Excellent and timely

Tom McAllister helps answer the questions the media tries to answer after school shootings. The narrator offers insight to both shooter and victims and the community. A must read for anyone concerned about the school shootings haunting our children.

Thought-provoking and fun

This story of the aftermath of yet another school shooting is as entertaining as it is timely. After years of listening to the Book Fight podcast Tom McAllister co-hosts, it was a delight to spend time in his writing. The book kinda reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut, and that can't be a bad thing: there is a lot of terrible stuff in the world, but maybe there can be hope. Or maybe not. Will I now check out McAllister's previous novel The Young Widower's Handbook? Oh yeah.

interesting story, awful naration

This story was odd, but kept my attention. it is far more about mental health and the breakdown of society more than the actual school shooting. The narrator is awful, robotic, and sounds weird. I tolerated her voice because I wanted to know the outcome, but she nearly ruins it.

Waste of time

Story nonexistent, a horrible narrator that made everything sound robotic, random topic hopping as in one moment you hear a deep talk about gun control, then about our main character's idea of how eggs turn into birds in people's stomach