• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 459 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Terribleminds (October 12, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005VEEVXW
• Chuck Wendig’s Website

 Buy Shotgun Gravy at:

• Amazon
• Book Depository (Unavailable)

“Sometimes she wakes up at night, smelling that gunpowder smell. Ears ringing. A whimpering there in the darkness. Doesn’t always hit her at night, either. Might be in the middle of the day. She should be smelling pizza, or garbage, or cat s**t wafting from the house next door, but instead what she smells is that acrid tang of gunsmoke. All up in her nose. Clinging there like a tick…”

So begins the tale of Atlanta Burns, a young girl with a grim past lingering at the fringes of her droll and dreary high school existence. She’s content to remain there, too, or so she thinks: soon, however, she’s drawn in a battle against two separate groups of bullies – a trio of local troublemakers and a group of Neo-Nazi gay bashers – to save a pair of new and unexpected friends.

But actions have consequences, and by fighting back, Atlanta discovers she’s kicked over a log, thus revealing what hides squirming underneath.

It’s just her, her friends, and a .410 squirrel gun against a handful of bullies and a conspiracy whose worst aspects remain yet hidden.

Can she triumph?

Will her victory be paid in unseen sacrifices?

Or is fighting back just asking for a face full of bad news?

I’ve been trying to write a review of Chuck Wendig’s Shotgun Gravy since I read it (2 weeks ago, at last check). Here’s my problem, I have no words for the beautifully brutal world he’s created for protagonist Atlanta Burns and my brain feels crippled by the sheer, overall authenticity of Shotgun Gravy.

Follow me on my bunny trail of thoughts, will you?

After Steven Spielburg’s Saving Private Ryan came out I remember reading a letter from a WWII verteran commending Spielburg on how realistic and accurate he had gotten the film. Problem was, Saving Private Ryan was so accurate it seems that the elderly veteran was experiencing PTSD. This is what I felt like after reading Shotgun Gravy.

It’s been almost 15 years since I graduated High School and I have not thought about it much. I was not one of those kids who went back to visit teachers, I didn’t really like High School and grade 9 and 10 were particularly difficult for me. Since reading Shotgun Gravy I’ve remembered things I haven’t thought about since I was 15 years old I remember thinking that I was probably the only virgin whore in existence or how I needed to make sure to arrive early to 10th grade math so that I could hide in the furthest corner of the classroom where certain people wouldn’t bother me. It also made me remember the simmering tension between the native/immigrant/weird/anybody else kids and the popular crowd or the way even teachers would join in on picking on a certain kid because that kid was “bringing it on him/herself” by acting/dressing/doing anything differently than the rest of the homogeneous masses. I also remembered the one openly gay guy at our school (he was around 6ft, wore false eyelashes and had way more confidence than I did) and I remembered feeling that if these were the best years of my life I wanted a fucking refund.

That’s how authentic Shotgun Gravy is! Wendig doesn’t water down or sanitize the High School experience he writes it in all it’s violent, soul sucking, ugliness. He in no way comes across as a pretentious adult, looking down his nose at the various High School castes, but rather talks the talk and walks the walk as if he’d somehow infiltrated the mind and body of a teenager in the American High School system. Wendig isn’t preachy or self-righteous, he just lays it out flat and calls it like he sees it.

Then I got nervous. My High School experience was pre-Columbine. Nobody worried about one of the bullied bringing a gun to school, trench coats weren’t banned, but were instead filled with cheap cigarettes and Magic cards, and there was no such thing as a lock down procedure. Should Chuck Wendig really be writing a novella that deals with the issue of bullying but is unapologetically dark and violent?

And…that’s when my awesome self kicked my nervous, middle class, housewife self’s ass. Of course, he should be writing this!

The problem of bullying, that some say was the flame that ignited events like Columbine, hasn’t ceased to exist because schools have adopted zero tolerance policies or started LGBT support groups. If anything, the problem of bullying has become worse and we need to talk about it, we need to be aware of it and we need to be active in the fight against it, in all it’s forms. Shotgun Gravy was like a kick in the pants reminding me, in my nice house, with my nice job and my well-repressed memories of High School, that in 6 or 7 years I’m going to have a kid in High School and if I don’t watch, listen to, love on and teach him, he’s either going to be part of the bullying problem or the solution.

I know I didn’t really tell you anything about this book, about it’s narrative, character development or literary bla, bla, bla, but buy it (it costs $2.99!!), read it, repent of your evil bullying ways and find a way to be part of the solution. Join an anti bullying group or raise your kids to be kind and tolerant by being a kind and tolerant person yourself.