Rating: 
Summary: Gone Boy -- a riveting read
Review: Gone Boy, is Gregory Gibson's exploration of the facts and emotions surrounding the murder of his young son. As many other reviewers have remarked, it is beautifully written, thoughtful, and fascinating.I expected the book to be a litany of complaints, wrongs, conspiracies and so-forth, and it was remarkably devoid of such histrionics. It was subtle and intelligent. Gibson's lack of histrionics makes the impact of his book all the stronger. His documentation of the incompetence of the Simon's Rock administration is bone-chilling. One of the most interesting, and again, chilling, parts of the book was a description of his meeting with Leon Botstein, President of Bard College (to which Simon's Rock belongs). Yet, despite numerous reasons Gibson has to be disgusted with the performance of the Simon's Rock administration, he has managed to contain his anger enough to write a well-reasoned, moving book -- one that is at the same time a memorial to his son, and food for thought about violence in our society, our schools, and the domino-effect that each small decision can have in creating a tragedy.
Rating:
Summary: Courageous, an incredible journey.
Review: Gregory Gibson is an incredible writer. Knowing Galen, his son, and knowing the pain that suurounded his death, I found Gibson's honesty and strength helpful in coming to understand how the life of a friend was taken.
Rating:
Summary: wow!
Review: Gregory Gibson takes the reader on a painful journey and makes it bearable.I appreciate his objectivity and honesty.No one can really understand what it is like to lose a loved one through murder but this book will bring you as close as possible.About the reviews chastising him for being angry:grieving people are angry,life has been pulled out from under them,control is gone, and yet the world marches on,rarely acknowledging their pain.That is part of the gift of this book,it is a real portrait of how prolonged grief is and how complicated.Maybe those naysayers were expecting some Oprahesque,shallow resolve.
Rating: 
Summary: alright alright
Review: Gregory Gibson was awakened by every parents' worst nightmare...his son, Galen, has been shot and killed on the campus of the small college he was attending. Once the shock wore off, the only way he could cope and manage his grief was to go on a walkabout..a trip to discover the facts behind his son's senseless murder. As he sets out on his journey of discovery he lets us in on how he feels, how is family is handling the loss, the motives behind the quest. The very fact that he keeps changing and refocusing the intent of his search is a story of coming to terms with a senseless act and the finality of death. It is heartbreaking to hear him discribe his wife. Annie, as she finds comfort in the world of Publishers' Clearing House mailers, his children begin to venture out into the world. As the story unfolds, and Mr. Gibson finds more and more truth about Galen's death, he also comes in contact with the many people who had an unwitting role in his son's death, hears their story and the pain they also feel. People are not as you might think. It is a sad fact of life that many of the horrors of life do not have a pat explination ...sometimes we have to accept that evil does walk among us, and we try not to succumb to it's pull. It is a a triumph of spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking, tender
Review: Gregory Gibson was awakened by every parents' worst nightmare...his son, Galen, has been shot and killed on the campus of the small college he was attending. Once the shock wore off, the only way he could cope and manage his grief was to go on a walkabout..a trip to discover the facts behind his son's senseless murder. As he sets out on his journey of discovery he lets us in on how he feels, how is family is handling the loss, the motives behind the quest. The very fact that he keeps changing and refocusing the intent of his search is a story of coming to terms with a senseless act and the finality of death. It is heartbreaking to hear him discribe his wife. Annie, as she finds comfort in the world of Publishers' Clearing House mailers, his children begin to venture out into the world. As the story unfolds, and Mr. Gibson finds more and more truth about Galen's death, he also comes in contact with the many people who had an unwitting role in his son's death, hears their story and the pain they also feel. People are not as you might think. It is a sad fact of life that many of the horrors of life do not have a pat explination ...sometimes we have to accept that evil does walk among us, and we try not to succumb to it's pull. It is a a triumph of spirit.
Rating:
Summary: a moving narrative of personal loss
Review: I found "Gone Boy" to be a personal and at the same time universal narrative that taught me as much about myself and my life as it did about the Gibson family and their loss. While exploring the deeply personal horrors of the effects of the violence in our society, it speaks eloquently about the larger absurdities of politics, both left and right and the evils of bureaucracy both large and small.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic, well written epic
Review: I received this book as a present, one of those books that should sit indefinitly on the table adjacent to your bed. For what ever reason, this book was around when I was looking for something, anything to read. I never put it down. The story is compelling and extremely well written. The amount of emotion that manages to seep through the pages is unparalled. While other reviews I've read compare this tome to other current books or reports on teen violence, I would not. This is an independant work, it stands alone, and you will be better for having read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I truly wanted to like this work - a story about a father's journey to come to terms with the senseless loss of his son by bullets fired randomly from the gun of another child. But unfortunately, Gibson's work comes across as an angry journal - more like self-psychotherapy than an interesting read. It is fragmented and uneven. From the heart to the page, something got lost in the translation.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I was a friend of Galen's (Greg's son) at Simon's Rock. While this book was very helpful to me in filling in the details of the events that led up to Galen's murder, and in helping me confront my own issues of sadness and anger surrounding the issue, I feel this book is an important read for people who were not involved as well. I hope a lot of people read it. I hope the parents of children who have been victims of shootings around the country (there have been too many, Littleton sticks out because of the scale, but I recall the stories if not the towns of several more over the last 2-3 years...) also read it, and maybe it will help them, too... and give them an idea of quests they could embark upon to help them with their grief. I hope the public at large reads this book and understands that there are deep, complex stories behind every shooting spree that appears on the television news. Maybe this book will inspire more people to humanize these issues in the media and political arenas. Finally, I hope this book brings a little bit of my friend, Galen, to a world of readers who can glimpse just a bit of the person who was so prematurely taken from this world... (Note: I disagree with the reader who gave this book one star, it was not an angry book, though Greg does discuss his anger, and his personal psychological journey that is part of his overall "Walkabout"... and it is only as fragmented and uneven as the real-life story behind it, it is an honest approach, it is well written, and it works...)
Rating:
Summary: a welcome dose of clarity infuses a muddled subject
Review: I was not privy to the horrible events at Simon's Rock, but in the past year I have become friends with several people who were. I read this book because I hoped to understand something of the awful tragedy which had affected these people so deeply. Gregory Gibson's book, though very personal, is also a thorough and clear examination of these specific events and of the greater social trends which enabled them to occur. Though he lets the reader into his own troubled and grieving mind, he does so with refreshing humor, and he is remarkably able to simultaneously convey both the obsessive near-madness of his darkest days and lucid hindsight. As a reader, I inhabit a strange middle zone between those who were present at Simon's Rock and those who are coming to the story fresh, but I believe that this book has merits for either kind of reader. It is by far the most level-headed and thoughtful analysis of youth violence that I have read, despite the scores of words being devoted to the subject by our national media. My only criticism, not of the book but of the subject itself, is this: why do we only bother to write and read about these kinds of grim youth-on-youth crimes when they happen in so-called "safe" enclaves like suburban high schools and small private colleges? I'm afraid the answer is all too obvious.
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