A Student of Living Things

text from the inside book flap
A Student of Living Things, by Susan Richards Shreve

Even in the confusion and dread of the post 9/11 world, the tightly-knit Frayn family is fairly well insulated from the snipers, the bomb threats, and the natural disasters that plague Washington D.C. a few years into the future.

Then, in the moment it takes Claire Frayn to dig for her umbrella, her brother Steven is shot down next to her on the library steps of their university. Shattered, each family member scatters to whatever haven they can find. Steven's father moves into the airplane hangar behind the house, his mother moves into the glass factory where she works, and Claire, a biology student, adapts.

Galvanized by an impassioned stranger who claims to be her brother's dear friend, she sheds her measured academic persona, and sets out to avenge her brother's death. Expecting to uncover a political conspiracy aimed at her outspoken brother, Claire finds instead her family's own darkest secrets and her true love.

This is not a tale of revenge. It is a love story in which a family finds happiness even after its worst nightmare has come true. Plotted like a thriller with a tremendous, surprising twist, this is a pitch-perfect, if painful, rendering of the way a family grieves and of the way violence seeps into every part of our lives. Much like Ian Mckewan's Saturday, A Student of Living Things takes on the moral, political, and philosophical questions of our time with a very intimate story about the futility of revenge and the sheer miracle of forgiveness.