Grief Without Sentiment
a review of "Only Child" by Rhiannon Navin
Rhiannon Navin’s 2018 debut novel, Only Child, appeared on a list I got from Grok in response to the following prompt.
(As a side note: I highly recommend this tactic — it’s one of the rare, consistently excellent uses of an LLM. Just adjust the phrasing to fit your own reading taste and your own reason for wanting to read more — it matters.)
I wrote:
“Good morning, Grok. I am spending way too much time online and I’m getting depressed. I need to spend more time reading books. I’m going to tell you ten novels I enjoyed. You’re going to recommend ten more that I might enjoy. Don’t worry about happy endings or triggering topics — a good novel will cheer me up, even if it’s on a sad topic or makes me cry.”
Grok responded with a list. I’ve now read three of the recommendations, and all of them have been excellent.
Only Child is a novel about a school shooting — a subject that’s both a political flashpoint and a grim, recurring feature of American life. Writing fiction about something so emotionally charged, so morally fraught, demands a rare kind of restraint. Navin doesn’t moralize or sermonize, which is a welcome relief in a novel that touches such a loaded “issue.” She also avoids the common pitfall of treating fiction as a vehicle for ideology.
Too many novels on this topic — This Is Where It Ends comes to mind — read like they were written with a checklist in hand. White girl grappling with her privilege, even while her life is falling apart? Check. Abusive, cartoonishly homophobic father? Check. A flawless, impossibly noble Muslim boy? Check. Latina survivor whose rape was ignored because her assailant was white? Check. The characters feel less like people than like representatives of social messages.
Navin’s novel has none of that. The world of Only Child feels grounded and real, with no hint of demographic box-checking or forced moral clarity. Instead, she narrows the lens to one child’s private world, trusting that the emotional truth of his experience will resonate more powerfully than any overt message. It’s a risky choice — and an admirable one. And it works.
I chose Only Child to review first because its narrative structure is unusually rich for anyone interested in the craft of writing — particularly in how point of view shapes our experience of a story.