Gail Giles' Shattering Glass is told over the course of a school year. Shattering Glass is told from the perspective of a high school senior named Young Stewart, who is reflecting upon the events of his past year. Specifically, how another senior named Simon Glass begins the year as an unpopular geek, but quickly becomes popular, and then murdered.
The novel, naturally, begins at the start of the school year. It also begins by Stewart telling readers that he never much cared for Simon Glass. In fact, Stewart says, he hated Simon so much that he and his friends were the people that killed him.
One day, Young and his friends, all of whom are in the "popular crowd" of the school, are sitting at a table. They see Rob Haynes, the leader of their clique, watching Lance, who was once the most popular student in the school, making fun of Simon Glass. To get back at Lance and gain more power, Rob decides to make Simon Glass, who was overweight and nerdy and ultimately, unpopular.
Over time, Rob convinces his friend group, including Young Stewart, to help him make Simon one of the most popular students in the school. One by one, Rob's friends agree to help him make him popular. And their plan eventually works.
As the school year progresses, Simon becomes more and more powerful. Now, Simon is popular and has been pegged by many people in the school as the soon-to-be prom king. This angers Young Stewart and some of his other friends. Simon's popularity eventually eclipses their own, and they start to get jealous.
Eventually, Stewart and his friends decide that they must kill Simon. They kill him because of their jealousy and their inability to feel good for a kid who otherwise had nothing. They kill him, ultimately, because they are abusive and do not feel the true weight of their power.
In many ways, Shattering Glass is a novel about the typical high school experience of many children. It is a story about cliques, a story about ostracization, and a story about bullying and its effects. But Giles' novel is much more than a typical high school novel. It is a novel about grief and a novel about jealousy and murder (in the case of the novel, the murder of someone who doesn't deserve to die).
While Shattering Glass is a novel which is chiefly meant to entertain, it has a number of very important themes and points of discussion, each of which are exceedingly relevant over 20 years after its initial publication in 2002. After all, technology may change, but human nature (and abuse of power) typically remains the same.
