SCHROEDER

A young man goes on a murdering spree and contemplates his anguished life in Cassidy’s psychological thriller.

Schroeder’s life is painfully empty—he has few friends, has never been in a romantic relationship, and feels that his “existence has faded into inconsequentiality.” A comic-book nerd and loner, he despairs of the fact that he has never traveled anywhere or done anything significant enough to generate consoling memories. One day, he quite suddenly rides his bicycle to a local bodega and kills two men inside (he clearly knows them, but readers don’t know how) with a shotgun. Then, with a fascinatingly incongruent show of empathy, he feeds the pet fish left orphaned in a tank. This commences an increasingly brutal campaign of murder, one that begins with an “unabashed excitement” that settles into a “calm reserve.” The mesmerizing story is narrated by Schroeder, whose discombobulated mind is populated by an “absolute jumble of obscure, noisy deliberations,” though he can often recount his daily routines with a lucid exactitude. As the narrative progresses, Schroeder’s backstory is filled in—among other hardships, he notes, “I never had a good father, coach, or teacher to admire, learn from, or educate me on things like how to tie a tie, unclog a sink, shave, change a tire, face challenges head on—a role model I could be grateful for who encouraged me, made me a better man." The author depicts the protagonist’s aching disappointment with a sensitive power: “How is it that nothing materialized for me at some stage in my life, an accomplishment or an attained goal that made me happy, completed me, or fell into place, explaining my purpose?” The character’s trajectory is bewitching—within the manic cascade of discursive thoughts, Schroeder has moments of intellectual composure in which he penetratingly reflects on the ruins of his life and the failed community in which he lives.

An affecting portrayal of youthful suffering transformed into violence.