Saturday, August 04, 2007

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Fiction/Literature


Nineteen minutes is all it takes to permanently change the lives of hundreds of people. Peter, fed up with being picked on, walks into school and kills 10 of his classmates, injuring many others, all in the time span of nineteen minutes. Josie is left alive to cope with the death of her friends and her lack of relationship with her mother. Really, this book is hard to explain. There are many characters and many emotions.

As any other Picoult book, her writing grabs you right away. After finishing the book and comparing it to My Sister's Keeper (my favourite Picoult book), I didn't think it was as good. The lines were far too blurred between good and bad. Practically every character was a victim, yet they had done something horribly wrong at the same time. Who are you supposed to feel sympathetic to?

The sad thing is that even after everything that happened to this town, nothing had really changed. Kids were still bullying other kids, and teachers were still turning their backs. Were 10 deaths not enough to realize that bullying needs to be stopped? Would it be enough in the real world??


Rating:

(4/5)

3 comments:

Sheila said...

Very interesting idea for this book. I'm beginning to like Jodi's writing also. Even though I have just skimmed her books. I need to read the one I got.

What you said, maybe we are not to sympathise with anyone. Since things go back the same anyway. It's a look to really what is not happening.
Just a thought.

Lauren said...

I suppose not being able to sympathize with anyone is more realistic!

Luke Armour said...

Interesting observations on the latest Picoult installment.
I thought you might be interested in knowing that Jodi Picoult will be doing an exclusive interview about Nineteen Minutes this week on BlogTalkRadio's show WSN Radio. Link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=44931The show airs live at 9pm US ET, September 6. It will also be archived at the same link afterwards. Hope to have you join us.