People Kill People (Review)

Ellen Hopkins used to be one of my favorite authors in Middle and High school, so I was both incredibly nervous and excited to revisit her writing in a more recent context, even if it was a little different than her usual work.

People Kill People is not exactly Hopkins go-to verse style, following a more conventional prose style. But there’s still an experimental tone to the majority of the sections, which are largely in third person, an uncommon choice, and interspersed with the poetic “I” from the personified viewpoint of that little voice in everyone’s head that tells them to do bad things.

“A coward with a gun is treacherous.”

Even in a slightly different style, People Kill People has a lot of the trademarks I remembered loving in Hopkins writing:

1) Never talking down to young readers. 

Hopkins is one of the few YA writers who write for teens as if they are adults and acknowledges that teens have sex, do drugs, face discrimination, and poverty, and more, never glossing over difficult subject matter but rather, focusing on it. Her writing is a reminder that hard-hitting books don’t just have to come from adult fiction, and the dark and gritty nature of her contemporaries not only gives voice to younger audiences but transcends across age-groups. However, this also means that you’ll find almost every trigger warning under the sun for most of her books, so proceed with caution. 

2) Multiple perspectives. 

You probably know by now that I love a good multi-perspective book, and most of Hopkins’s follow at least two characters. This one, however, takes on more narratives than I’ve ever seen in another Hopkins story. Unfortunately, this translates into a lot of backstory and info-dumping that we have to catch onto at the beginning of the book, which becomes a bit dense. Getting through all of the introductions before moving on to the rest of the story takes well over 100 pages, which is a bit much even in a book pushing 500. Although, it ends up being necessary in order for the rest of the story and does go by relatively quickly with Hopkins’s writing style. I just wish it could have been broken up more and that the information could have been worked in more naturally instead of all at once. 

The fact that all of these narratives come together in some way or another, whether because they’re acquaintances, or related, or even because they live in the same house in some instances, is interesting and ends up working well for the themes but only makes it more confusing as each character becomes both a narrator in their own chapters and supporting in another’s. 

3) Plenty of surprises.

We know from early on that at some point during the book someone will shoot and someone will die. We don’t, however, know which of our characters will be at which end of those events. 

This certainly spurs the story forward but, strangely, doesn’t become the main source of tension. I predicted from relatively early on who would be the shooter, and I don’t think it’s that surprising considering what Hopkins is trying to say about gun safety in the story. But there were so many other twists and turns, surprises about characters and developments in their stories, that it almost didn’t matter. 

4) Taking on the tough stuff. 

This one is clear from the title and overall theme of the book. It’s a task in and of itself to take on a topic like gun violence in America, so kudos to Hopkins for that. But this book becomes almost as much about immigration and about youth becoming involved in white supremacy groups and organizations as it is about gun control. Which, isn’t a bad thing. The story acknowledges that gun rights are a multi-layered issue and tries to tackle all of these facets. This becomes apparent in the many perspectives which attempt to encompass the whole issue, which includes people from both sides and people have each been affected by guns in different ways. 

“‘I don’t wage war with battleships,’ she said. ‘I prefer submarines.’”

It succeeds…mostly. 

It certainly succeeds in expressing the thoughts and opinions of many teens. That’s a feat in and of itself and an important one. But that only applies to teenagers who already believe in what the overall message of this book is.

It’s clear what Hopkins opinions are from early on, and therefore, pretty predictable as to how the story will end up. And it’s also clear in her writing of those characters who support guns. The majority of the characters in this book lean towards white supremacist ideas, but it seemed clear to me that those characters were written by someone who very much disagreed with those ideals. That doesn’t mean they weren’t written well, or convincingly, just that the pen behind the words was somewhat obvious. 

“If one scribbles

Bullshit on vellum, it remains bullshit.”

And because of that, I don’t think that anyone who comes from those types of opinions are going to be swayed. This book gets a big thumbs up for reiterating the thoughts of liberal thinkers, but if it was ever trying to change people’s minds about gun violence, it was nowhere close to winning. 

But then again, that’s an almost impossible task to set before Hopkins and not necessarily the main goal of the story, (although I think it might have been part of the intent). Still…I had hope that if anyone could do it, it might be Hopkins. But it’s hard to write as if unbiased when the reason you’re writing the story at all is, well, because you are. 

“See, I’ve got this theory.

Given the right 

Circumstances,

Any person could kill someone.

Even you.”

This is especially true considering how much of a focus ends up being on making sure the message comes across. In the end, the conclusion to the story is thematic in and of itself. Its intention is pretty clear. But then we also get to know where all the characters ended up, followed by an epilogue which basically spells out the entire message of the story in blatant terms (in a very nice verse, admittedly), and then we get a ‘where they are now’ type of section in which we’re given a cursory glance of the rest of the characters lives. It’s tied up so tightly and neatly (not prettily, mind you, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for these characters after all the things that went down) that there’s no room for question. For people who don’t like any hint of ambiguity in their stories, that’s probably a wonderful thing, but I’m certainly not one of them and it felt like there was no trust in the reader to get the message from the story, making it necessary to beat them over the head with what they are supposed to get out of it at the end…just in case. And what’s the point of that after reading the long version for 500 pages?

I rated People Kill People 3.5 out of 5 stars. 

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