Nineteen Minutes- Book Review

Nineteen minutes is a riveting drama written by the well known Jodi Piccoult. She is utmost known for the book My Sister’s Keeper which was turned into a movie in 2009. Jodi is acknowledged for writing books that are not only able to capture and take the readers into the lives of the characters, but also someone who writes about real world problems. She knows how to truly draw the reader in until the last page.

Jodi Lynn Piccoult is a 47 year old woman who was born May 19,1966 in Nesconset, Ny. She has written 21 books with many more to come, her first book was published in 1992 “ Songs of the Humpback Whale”. Her latest book is “ The storyteller” which was published in early 2013. She was recently named NYT bestselling author. Jodi has a very different way of writing which detaches her from the others. When she writes a book she writes in each character's point of view, you are able to understand each person's thinking. She has changed so many people's lives through her writing. She will continue to impact people with her books for many years to come.

Nineteen minutes is  a heart stopping novel about a school shooting ( that lasted nineteen minutes).“Everyone would remember Peter for 19 minutes of his life, but what about the other nine million?” asks Peter’s mother. In the first pages of the book you meet Alex the towns judge and Josie her daughter. You are introduced into the relationship that they have and how they communicate, you then learn about Peter ( the shooter). Jodi takes you in his world from his point of view. Jodi takes you into Peter’s past and lets you know why he is the way he is and what motivated him to do the shooting. From the beginning Jodi lets you know that there is more to the shooting then you think. It wasn’t just a random rampage that one boy decided to do it was a well thought out tragedy. From the beginning pages are able to see the dynamic of the relationships in this book.  

The way that Jodi decided to write this book was beautiful. Since it was a book written about a shooting if it was written from Josie point of view (Victim of shooting) it would become very bias. When you write from each character’s view you are able to understand how the shooting affected each person. Jodi also writes from the past to the present. One chapter of the book may be 5 years before the shooting and then another chapter may be 1 month before the shooting. This is how she gives you background of each character and you are able to learn where they come from and why they behave the way that they do. By her doing this you don’t form judgements of the character, even though Peter Houghton shot his fellow class members you learn that the situation was much larger than life. Not that killing people was justified but you are able to understand him as a person. When Jodi wrote about the shooting in the book it wasn’t too much. I was scared when reading this book that the shooting part would be so sad. But the way she wrote was capturing. It wasn’t too graphic she drew you in so that you wanted to know what happen step by step.

There are many questions that are brought up in Nineteen minutes. Such as can someone be pushed too far? Another question that was brought up was could something have been done differently. Could his parents had listened to him when he constantly told them he was bullied. Another question that was brought up was did the students deserve to die? Should they have been punished for their wrongdoings? In addition why was peter bullied? Why him? Why was being different a death sentence? Why couldn’t he have just been Peter? In the book Jodi brings up a lot of issues when it comes to peer pressure and how it can really push someone past their breaking point.  

This book for the most part exceeds my expectations. Overall it was a absolutely a well written book. But at times it moved very slowly, but that was because without the background you weren’t able to understand each character. I never lost interest in what I was reading. Every Time I picked up the book I was hooked. I wanted to read all the way through to that last page. This book really opened my eyes to how much bullying can affect someone. I thought that reading this book around the time where America is being affected by school shooting would be hard but , this book only opened my eyes to the real  world problems. It also opened my eyes to the reality that some of these people are being bullied so much that they don’t know what else to do.  Anyone who likes fiction books that deal with realistic problems should read this book. Also it is just a good read the way she develops the characters and the life portrayed in this book is amazing.