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Book Review: ‘The Tragedy Paper’ by Elizabeth Laban

Gabrielle Bondi

TRAGEDY PAPER coverThe Tragedy Paper follows two characters. We first meet Duncan, a student starting his first day at The Irving, a boarding school in upstate New York. Duncan is hesitant to come back, after what happened last year, which he only vaguely alludes to and doesn’t explain. He’s even more disheartened when he realizes that he is stuck with the worst dorm room, a small space with hardly a window. It’s in the room that he finds a collection of CDs that Tim, the senior who lived in his room last year, left specifically for him. Duncan sits and listens to the CDs and learns that Tim has recorded his story about what led to the big thing that happened last year. Duncan can’t believe it and doesn’t want to listen anymore, but he can’t stop listening to Tim’s story.

What struck me right away when reading Elizabeth Laban’s The Tragedy Paper was that it’s similar to stories I’ve read before, yet I still didn’t find this kind of narrative tiring. If anything, I was eager to find out what this impending and slightly scary revelation the story is leading up to. The book switches between Duncan and Tim, although the story is mostly focused on Tim, who I should mention is albino. Clearly, you can guess Tim’s story is something about fitting in and the lengths someone would go to seem “normal” to impress a girl. In that regard, it’s nothing new, but we do get to meet an interesting and unique character in Tim. He’s the one that I most connected with since his story is told in first person. It was harder to connect with Duncan because I didn’t know what his connection to Tim’s tragedy was. Was it bad? Was it good? All we know is that Duncan feels a tremendous guilt over it, leaving the reader unsure how to feel about him.

The story has a perfect backdrop, a tragedy-themed essay that every senior has the entire school year to write and complete for their English class. It’s looming on every senior’s minds. It’s worked into their story effortlessly and adds more significance to the story at hand. In addition, Laban is a talented writer. She knows how to draw the reader in and writes her characters with authenticity.

My biggest issue with the novel is some of its predictability. With using common tragedy tropes, it was easy to expect what would happen to Tim. 1. You obviously know it’s tragic. And 2. Tim leaves big clues how what will cause it to happen. That, in turn, made me feel a tad underwhelmed by the revelation. However, I wasn’t able to predict how exactly it played out and every character’s role in the event. So, there is some surprise in the climax.

The best thing about The Tragedy Paper is the take-away. It delivers a good and simple message: Believe in yourself. Yeah, you may have heard that so many times. Trust me; I have as well. But it is nice to be non-annoyingly and genuinely reminded of that, and The Tragedy Paper finds a profound and engrossing (and well, also tragic) way to reinforce that message into readers.

Rating: 7/10 stars

The Tragedy Paper will be available wherever books are sold on Tuesday, January 8th. Support The Young Folks and purchase the book at our TYF Store, powered by Amazon.

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