Deconstructing Amelia

I enjoyed this book a lot. I found it very engaging to listen to and was really looking forward to the next time I could listen. I developed a few theories while listening. Some of them were correct, some of them were only partially correct, some were totally wrong. And I was blindsided by a plot twist at least once.

There are some small spoilers in the following, but nothing very serious, I think. Mostly it turned out to be me ranting a bit on the subject of bullying.

I have seen the various poor reviews it has received here on GR, and you know, in a way I can see what some of them mean. Like the detective taking Kate along when asking questions and all that.

On the other hand, and in my opinion far more important than this or that plot device, it's a powerful tale of bullying. Because all that other semi-soap opera-y stuff aside, like the whole mystery surrounding Amelia's real father and to some extent who wrote the gossip blog (totally called that one, by the way), bullying is a real problem. It is something which has brought children to suicide before. Fact.

And Amelia is being bullied, there is no question about it. As indeed are several of the other girls, probably. The others in a different way, because they are being indirectly threatened. If you do not go along with this, you could be next. This isn't to offer any excuses for them, because they are still bullying someone else instead of seeking help from an adult.

Then again, the way this school was run, who could they possibly tell at a place which had been told by a member of the school board, a lawyer even, to pretend to know nothing so the school (an by extension the board members) couldn't be held responsible for it? The idea being that the school can't step in against something that happens outside of the school itself.

Except, it doesn't. A lot of it happens IN school. Emptying of lockers, binning school books, switching essays, stealing of gym gear, graffiti on locker doors... And none of the school staff step in. None. Some of them must have seen. Whoever had to clean all that nail varnish off the locker door could at least have mentioned it. Amelia insisting that she didn't hand in the plagiarised paper but not given the slightest chance to prove it, even though she had never been in that sort of trouble before and even though it was common knowledge that this was her best subject. Even though it was handed in by some kind of email system, in which case it could have been easily checked. Easy for the teacher assistent (why does this concept even exist?!) to switch the papers, but just as easy for the teacher or the headmaster to go and check the actual inbox themselves. Or for Amelia to show them a 'sent' folder. Instead, it is automatically assumed that Amelia must be lying, her name on the paper taken as undeniable proof, because if she isn't lying, then someone will have to accept that there is something going on that they are pretending not to know about.

Bullying IS the school's problem. It's also the problem of the parents of the children involved, obviously, but it is always the school's problem. It's a problem when you have an environment that doesn't teach children that this is wrong, give them some tools for how to avoid it. It's a problem when you have a whole group of people who are supposed to be figures of authority turn a blind eye because they hope it'll all go away when most of them are leaving school by the end of the year anyway, and they might lose their jobs if they say or do anything.

Bullying can have serious consequenses for the victim for their entire life, even after the bullying stops. Fact. But if I might lose my job if I try to help, I'd better pretend I don't know anything. Me first, me first, me first. Unfortunately, self-defence is a human way of reacting. That is why the taboo about bullying needs to be broken, that is why teachers need to be given some training on how to deal with bullying and how to recognise the signs of it taking place and that is why the children themselves need to be involved in preventing it happening.

Apparently I have a lot of thoughts about this. I didn't even know that until I'd finished listening to the book. All in all, I think the primary problem in this book isn't really the bullying so much as it is nobody dealing with it.

I'm really glad I listened to this one.