“Nineteen Minutes”
by Jodi Picoult
Published: February 2008
ISBN: 1416585109

(Updated: March 6, 2008.)

From the Publisher…

Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister’s Keeper and The Tenth Circle, pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened before her very own eyes — or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show — destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.

I’m still not sure why I picked this book up. I guess it was the “right to judge” part of the synpopsis. But now, after having read it, I find the synopsis falls way short of describing the book.

The title is “Nineteen Minutes”. This is how long it took for one boy to rampage his high school. The book describes before, after and during these nineteen minutes from a bunch of vantage points.

I find Ms. Picoult incredibly courageous to have tackled this topic. And I find her tackling smart, insightful and rounded. It is about nineteen minutes. And it so isn’t. I still can’t decide if I would like my children to read this or not. I am glad that I did. I give this book a five out of five hearts on my scale.

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