Forgive me, Leonard Peacock is a gripping tale of a troubled teen's last day of life before he shoots his former best friend and then himself with his grandfather's P-38 pistol, a relic from WW II. Leonard's recitation of the things he has to do before his final acts is fleshed out with footnotes that reveal the suffering that drives him to plan this murder/suicide. ""34. You should read about all of those [other] killers. They all have a lot in common. I bet they felt lonely in many ways, helpless, FORGOTTEN, ignored, alienated, irrelevant, cynical, and sad . . ." This is Leonard in a nutshell. No one remembers his eighteenth birthday; no one except maybe his Holocaust Studies teacher, Herr Silverman, and his elderly neighbor Walt seems to care one way or another what happens to him. Betrayed by his best friend, Asher, snubbed by the beautiful and uber-Christian Lauren, and basically abandoned by his mother, Linda, Leonard moves through his day hoping against hope that someone will connect with him enough to deter him from his violent intentions.
At first the story just seems like a creepy way to introduce us to the mind of deranged potential killer who takes a weapon to school to revenge himself against everyone who has bullied him. But as Leonard keeps writing, his dark humor and anguish combine to make him much more sympathetic. He is a teen with serious issues struggling to find good in the world. As much as Leonard wants to kill Asher, he has also prepared special gifts for the few people who have made his life bearable.
There are some rather strange passages in the beginning that appear to be letters Leonard and his daughter have written to him from the future, but eventually these make sense as a strategy suggested by Herr Silverman to show Leonard that if he can imagine a world where things get better, this will help him to deal with his depression.
Leonard seems to me to be a character well worth knowing and trying to understand. His internal dialogs ring true as do the efforts of other characters to reach him. Recommended.
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