Accessories

A Great Book!
First off, I would like to comment on the way the book was written - in flashbacks - but ones that are clear and really have a way of letting you understand the story in bits and pieces. It does not deviate from the entire flow of the story but lets you sneak a peek at the reasons why the things happened.

This book starts out with the relationship of Alex Cormier, a judge and single mother, and her teenage daughter, Josie. About how Alex fails at being a mother to Josie but is a terrific judge and how Josie no longer feels as close to her mom as she did when she was younger.

The story revolves around a shooting in Josie's high school. This is the reason why I gave the book 4 stars - because I find that this sort of plot - one with shooters inside schools - is pretty lame. I see it in the news all the time so why bother to write it down in a novel, right?

Well, the difference here is that the shooter lives and someone actually loves the shooter. He gets prosecuted and a trial ensues. The entire length of the novel revolves around the reasons why the shooter - Peter - did what he did and what made him do it. The defense raised a syndrome similar to a battered wife syndrome - the bullied syndrome or something like that.

Anyway, if you want to read the book, stop reading from this point on. The book contains a very important twist in the last few pages that will leave you shocked. :) For me, it was worth the read, the writer has a gift for writing - although, the main story could have been much better. I write a summary below that is chronological in order and not how it was written in the book.

The shooter here was Josie's elementary school best friend, Peter. Ever since they were young, Josie and Peter were very close. On the very first day Peter was sent to school, his was already bullied (his lunch box was thrown out of the school bus) and Josie would always be there to protect him. They were close because their parents were also very close.

However, things started to change when they were in high school, Josie became a member of the popular kids in school and Peter was still bullied. So in front of the entire school, Josie had to pretend that she didn't like Peter and this made Peter think that Josie was no longer her friend.

However, there was one instance in the book that made Peter realize that Josie was still his friend. They were stuck in an elevator in the library and Josie confessed to him that her boyfriend, Matt, beat her up and that's why she was holding crutches. This was also the place where Josie told Peter that she still considered him her friend but just that, not to mention it to the entire school.

So the day came when Peter snapped and went into school and started shooting everybody who bullied him and some other random people. Thing is, before he was able to shoot himself, a detective (who later has a love story with Alex, Josie's mom and they end up together) stopped Peter.

Peter was then given a very good defense attorney who came up with the bully syndrome as a defense. (very good defense, I think so myself :) However, even after a very good defense, Peter was still convicted.

The twist comes now - Josie was very hung up that one of the people who Peter killed was her boyfriend. Even though she knew that he was not good for her because he hurt her physically, still she missed him. On the day of the shooting, she could not remember much and kept saying this. But, a day before the last day of the trial, she said she remembered exactly what happened and she revealed this on the witness stand. That she shot her boyfriend Matt and it wasn't Peter who shot him.

Til the end, since Peter considered Josie his friend, she never ratted him out. Instead, she confessed this crime herself. She got a 5 year sentence in jail and Peter killed himself on the way to prison.

Again, I highly recommend this book. It is a very good read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Great read
This book grabbed me right away. My first book by Jodi Picoult and will not be my last. Tough topic but written very well, good character development. Picoult's topics are thought provoking and great for book club discussions. Great read!

The creation of a mass murderer!
Peter Houghton would hardly be considered a typical seventeen year old teenager. Because one morning, he loaded his backpack with four guns, went to school and killed nine students and a teacher. Jodi Picoult's enthralling best-selling novel "Nineteen Minutes", titled to portray the astonishingly brief period of time that Houghton took to complete his brutal spree, examines the genesis of that event and the people affected by it from every conceivable perspective - families, victims, survivors, witnesses, parents, friends, police and the law.

Picoult expertly examines a myriad of issues - teenage angst; "in" crowds; drug use; bullying; teen sexuality; peer pressure; privacy; parenting - and creates a gripping fictionalized version of a tragic event that no thinking reader could possibly put down. At the end of this astonishing tale, many readers will actually feel sympathy for a convicted mass murderer. Certainly many also will not but, at the end of the day, all readers will realize that Picoult's amazing ability to present an issue from a wide variety of perspectives without herself being judgmental will at least give readers an understanding as to how such a horrific tragedy might come to pass!

Many potential readers may have heard the criticism of the endings of Picoult's novels. Somewhat out of character and different in flavour than the entire novel that led up to it, the ending for "Nineteen Minutes" is certainly not exempt from this criticism. While it is somewhat Hollywood in nature, it provides a twist ending that will snap the reader's eyelids wide open. Maybe it was a little too pat, maybe it wasn't ... but at the very least, it will provide a whole new layer of provocative thought that will keep the reader puzzling over the issues that Picoult raises for a long, long time after the last page closes.

Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

Nineteen Minutes
I didn't like this book. I didn't find the characters likable or intriguing.
And stopped reading because the ending was so easy to figure out.

A New Addiction
This was the first of Picoult's novels that I've read, and I've become addicted. Well-written, timely topic. Engrossing.