I want to share the existence of two incredible and exciting novelists, one of which I am reading now, the other one or two books away on my pile. One is by one of the world’s most accomplished and stylized novelists, and the other, the one I’m reading now, is by a relative newcomer who is also stacking up raves and awards..

British Novelist Rosamund Lupton is the latter; she has done the impossible. She’s written the book I’m stuck on now. I picked it up last night to glance at the first few pages and was still at it at 2 a.m….I’ll keep at this one until I finish. It’s a rough subject; I’m not sure I’ll read it just before bed.

Lupton turned the fictional story of a terrifying school shooting into a heart-wrenching, uplifting exploration of love and courage.

Her book highlights the failure of the American media to capture the love, sacrifice, and courage inherent in these shootings, not just the violence, bureaucratic squabbling, police theories, and paralyzing politics. The humanity of adults and children are a seminal part of these shootings, our culture and political system seem paralyzed and unable to know what to do about them, a horror in itself.

There is very little killing in this account of two sick people threatening to destroy a private British school under siege. It’s all about the hearts and souls of the victims and innocents, people who find courage and strength they never imagined they might have. These are not trained combat warriors; they are teachers, children, and parents, helpless in the face of true horror.

The terrified children in this book have barricaded themselves inside classrooms, the library, and an impregnable theater.

The headmaster lies wounded in the school library, unable to help his trapped students and staff.

Outside, a police psychologist in a trailer must identify the gunmen before they destroy the school while desperate parents gather for hour after grinding hour. They all have three hours to find the courage to confront the evil now familiar in the world – the slaughter of innocent children.

This is a love story from beginning to end, so wrenching and touchingly told that I decided not to read it in the evening hours before bed. It’s not scary or gruesome, far from it, but it holds my attention and heart.

I can’t wait to keep reading tonight. I’ve stayed away from the books produced in our country about school shootings; I’ve had no trouble reading these. It’s a fantastic book. In America, where school killings have become tragically routine, we tend to focus most on the politics of gun violence and the tactics and response of the police.

We are horrified by the drama and addicted to it. We see horrendous images repeated hundreds of times over days and days and never know how to feel about it all. Rosamund gives us away.

Lupton has gone the opposite way.

She writes about the courage of teachers, students, and eight-year-olds hiding in closets. In the safe library, the teacher orders her students to return to rehearsing for “Macbeth,” their courage will bring tears, as will the struggle of an eight-year-old who won’t close the door to his hiding space because he is afraid of the dark.

Don’t think you can flip a few pages of this novel and put it down. There’s no chance.

This is an astonishing book, gripping and brilliantly written and plotted. It touches the humanity of the human soul, not the fear our dysfunctional society thrusts on us. School shootings are a horror, but Rosamund helps us understand that they often bring out the best parts of us: kindness, empathy, honesty, and courage.

Children often become heroes.

The terrorists and cowardly politicians can’t take our best parts from us. And thanks to this book, I don’t have to hide from it.

I just got another promising book from a British author, Anne Enright, a Booker Prize winner credited by critics as one of the world’s finest novelists. Her book is about a young poet who leaves her mother’s house in Ireland to find herself as a poet. She means to live a creative and poetic life and get to Dublin, experiencing the drama of love and the creative life.

The story is about humanity and creativity and the passions that drive both.

I haven’t read this book; I just read all its stories and reviews. I will certainly get to it soon. The critics are raving over it, and it’s a best-seller in England. It’s a book for romantics and dreamers and poets and people who dream and never give up on their bliss.