Asne Seirstad One Of Us; The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massace in Norway

A remarkably powerful and grim book. It manages if not explain to the inexplicable, at least to give some sort of insight into the nature of the person who caused the tragedy...and for once this term is not hyperbolic.

It opens with a stunningly vivid and chilling account of part of the massacre, making use of the killers own words and self analysis/ writings mixed with the remembrances of those who were experiencing it and who survived.

Once this is over and we have this in our mind...this was what everything that followed led up to...we begin the life story of Andes B. This is fascinating and remarkably detailed and it is enormously interesting to read of details of his life and behaviour which one then, perhaps wrongly, tries to connect to his later actions...as we know what the end of the story is thanks to the event and the opening chapter which, of the whole book, is the most viscerally and, I think, deliberately and overtly emotional chapter In the body of the book, so that when one comes to Friday, the day of the massacre, the tone is distinctly less overtly emotional although no less devastating,and emotional because of that.

Reading about his life brought home to me the stunning importance of parents in making a man of the child and it w fascinating to ponder how, if at all, the actions of the mother and father directly affected Anderson and to what extent they made him who he is...a variant of the old nature/ nurture debate I suppose. I do not know the answer by the way and would be VERY suspicious of. anyone who claimed to have this.

However the story of Anders is only a part of this remarkable book. What makes it so powerful is that his story is interwoven with the lives of a selection of the young people on the island, some of who survived some of whom did not. This must have been incredibly difficult for the author to just decide, let alone write but the final effect is astonishing. The choice gave us one, of remarkable potential, who died,Simon, one who lost a sibling, (Muslims) one who survived but great.y physically damaged, one who survived. This was the finest and most moving and remarkable aspects of the book as it showed the results on lives of an event like this but not in a sentimental, predictable or cliched way.

This is an amazing book that should be read by all..and it is profoundly depressing and disturbing to see that there are groups, and one individual in particular in the public eye, here in the USA who mirror many of the ideas of Anders...