The gyst of Nineteen Minutes is that a small town is turned upside down after a school shooting. The reader is exposed to both the lives of the shooting victims as well as the shooter himself. I found myself so morally conflicted on whose side to choose. Until the end you are reminded that you never really know someone. A lot of the themes brought me back to my childhood and adolesence. The wounds of adolesence can take years to heal!
As a future parent my mind went in to overdrive imagining different scenarios that my children may face leaving me with an overwhelming desire to protect them from any kind of wound. It's so important to teach our children to be kind and to teach the importance of our actions good and bad...
Praise for Nineteen Minutes:
“ Even though shootings, most notably that of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., are now part of the public psyche, Picoult manages to go beyond the cold, sterile statistics that are intoned today when retelling those events. Her book reminds us of the heartbreak and the loss of innocence. It's also breathtaking storytelling by a best-selling writer... At a time when a slew of teen movies make light of social ostracism and social climbing in schools, Picoult's novel is a reminder that too large a dose of anything can be poisonous. It also makes you want to grab every kid who feels like an outcast and say,.'I promise, this, too, shall pass.'”
—Associated Press
“Picoult paints a troubling portrait of families and kids, especially the bullies and the bullied…(the book's) ordinariness gives it surprising power. This could be your community, your neighbor, your family.”
—USA Today
“Picoult's fiction is intelligent, often moving and always ripe for book club discussion…Who knows? Oprah has been unpredictable with her picks of late, but maybe "Nineteen Minutes" will turn her on to fiction again.”
—New York Daily News
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1 comment:
For your second Picoult reading, I'd recommend "Plain Truth." Really gets ya thinking....
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