A Flavour of the Book: “Once, at a bar, Patrick’s best friend, Nina, had asked what the worst thing he’d ever seen was. He’d answered truthfully – back when he was in Maine… a guy had committed suicide by tying himself with wire to the train tracks; the train had literally cleaved him in two. There had been blood and body parts everywhere; seasoned officers reached the crime scene and started throwing up in the scrub bush. Patrick had walked away to gain his composure and found himself staring at the man’s severed head, the mouth still round with a silent scream…”
The Authortrek View: Jodi Picoult’s novel will inevitably be compared to Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, since both books deal with the aftermath of a school shooting. The stories are told quite differently, with the shooting in Nineteen Minutes occurring at the beginning of the novel rather than the end. However, Jodi Picoult has also managed to construct a killer ending for Nineteen Minutes… Picoult’s depiction of the shooter, Peter, is far more sympathetic than Shriver’s Kevin, which allows for a rather novel and intriguing defence for the shootings in court. The drama is heightened by the fact that Sterling is such a small town, where everyone knows everyone else. It also contributes to Peter’s feelings of trauma, as he is never allowed any respite from the bullying that has followed him throughout his school career, since his fellow students are always the same. Jodi Picoult is very good at conveying how tribal this culture is, with the alpha males hanging around with the alpha females, with all the runts like Peter pushed from pillar to post as status is reinforced by the group. But unfortunately, Peter has all too easy access to guns… Nineteen Minutes suffers in comparison to We Need to Talk About Kevin, as Jodi Picoult’s novel does not strive to be all that literary. However, neither is it a mere courtroom thriller, as Picoult does deal with serious issues, such as the obvious one of gun control, and more subtle ones, such as feminism and absentee fathers in the case of Josie. Nineteen Minutes is also more of an ensemble piece, with no one voice standing out above the others, although Picoult has perhaps too many stories to tell, as the ancillary characters are fleshed out a bit too well to the detriment of the novel’s pace. Where Picoult is refreshing is in her measured approach to this explosive issue, mainly shown by her sympathetic portrayal of Peter. And although Picoult has no answers for the problems she depicts, she does shine a light on our hypocritical responses to such crimes (such as the call for the death penalty for the killing of children when the perpetrator is still a child themselves). The resolution does strain credibility somewhat, but then again, this novel is set in the US, where the unbelievable horrors of school shootings are all too commonplace.
To find out more about the author, please visit our Jodi Picoult page.
If you have any more details about this book or a review you can send it to authortrekreview@authortrek.com. We will not publish your email address, or pass it on to other parties. Please include the author’s name and the book title in the subject line of your email. If you have any further queries, then please read the FAQ first.
Lisez cette page en français avec
Babelfish Lesen
diese Seite auf Deutsch mit
Babelfish
