Book 3 Review

Nineteen Minutes

“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.
In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it.” (Jodi Picoult).

 

Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, is a novel that breaks the boundaries of fiction writing. Jodi Picoult tells a story about a school shooting that took place at a high school in a small town known as Sterling, New Hampshire. The characters within the novel are so well written that they started to feel real. The emotion Picoult put into the novel combined with the emotion felt while reading will give readers an experience they will never forget.

When writing this novel, Picoult did the unthinkable; she took a sensitive subject such as a tragic school shooting, and turned it into a best-selling novel. Not many authors can say they have done that. One of the many great things about this novel though was, that it wasn’t focused on the graphic, gory details about the shooting as much as it was focused on the affect it had on the people who were involved.  The novel itself isn’t supposed to be sad overall; according the Janet Maslin in After the Shooting Is Over , “[This] novel [has] soap-opera momentum, and they guarantee comforting closure.” The issue here is that people don’t want to read about a tragic event that killed 10 teenagers. They want to read books about happy things such as romance sparked between two unlikely people. But let’s ask readers this, what’s the difference between a novel about a tragic shooting that kills 10 children, compared to a best-selling novel that kills 23 children per book for a “game”? Picoult makes it clear that this book is not all about the death. It’s about the affect it has on the living. Josie, one of the main characters, only wants to move on from the horror.  She says, ““But then again, maybe bad things happen because it’s the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.”(pg. 221) This book does a wonderful job showing readers how different people can be affected by the same tragic event.

Different characters in the novel had different reactions to the shooting, so Picoult did the most practical thing; she wrote the book in third person.  In order for the reader to get the most out of the book, it was only necessary to write in the point of view of a narrator so all the characters could be heard.  It was hard to understand why reading this book was so addicting until a thought popped up; every character has a voice in this story but yet readers don’t get their whole story until they read the end. This novel made the characters feel alive because every thought, every feeling and every emotion they ever felt was understood by the readers. “’I’m great,’ Josie pasted on a smile. It felt gummy, like wallpaper that hadn’t been smoothed right. But she had gotten so good at this- faking it- that it was second nature. Who would have thought that she’d inherited something from her mother after all?” (page 253). Every person could relate to Josie. Faking smiles and hiding her true feelings within; everybody knows that feeling. When Picoult wrote this book, her intent was to zone in on the emotions of the characters and make sure the readers hear all of their voices and therefore connect with the characters on a whole different level.

                A question that pops up a lot is, “What makes this book stand out amongst the others?”  The answer to that question can be summed up in two words: character development. The amount of thought Picoult most have put into these characters is unimaginable. On every page a new connection is made between two or more characters. In order to get a better understanding of the characters, Picoult used flashbacks and flash-forwards almost every other chapter. It’s brilliant because the readers were hooked and had to keep reading to find out more.  In the end,  emotions are running wild but yet Picoult continues to throw curve balls until the last page. Throughout the whole novel characters grow up and become people who the readers not only want to love, but want to hate as well. Peter is the best example, Picoult must have really thought him out. He’s a sensitive kid who was bullied his whole life, so when he finally snaps the readers want to hate him, but they can’t. Empathy is a good word to describe the emotion readers will feel while reading this book. “’Don’t tell,’ Peter whispered, and Josie realized he was offering her a way out- a deal sealed in blood, a partnership of silence: I won’t share your secrets, if you don’t share mine.” (page 441). This is the part of the book where reader’s start to question the evilness of Peter. Is Peter really a monster, or is he just a misunderstood teenage boy with a good heart after all? Picoult does a wonderful job developing her characters as well as throwing readers curve balls, making Nineteen Minutes such a thrilling experience.

This novel deserves five stars. Nineteen Minutes was such a thriller, readers are still trying to recover. Jodi Picoult took a tragic horror and turned it into a best-selling novel. It sucks readers into its whirlpool of emotion and never spits them out. Readers are hooked within the first page of the book. Picoult was brilliant and deserves more credit than she is given. Nineteen Minutes is a novel readers will never forget.