Nineteen Minutes (2nd Post)

Between now and my last post I've finished Nineteen Minutes, and though it was a bit different than I expected, I still really enjoyed it.

Skipping over what I've already mentioned about this book, I think one really unique part of Jodi Picoult's writing style is how she seemlessly incoorperates different timelines to go with the different viewpoints. Though at times the order can seem to be random and confusing, once you get an understanding of which character is which it's perfectly easy to keep up with the style because she changes the time each chapter, heading it with "5 years before" or "2 months after". What I also find really interesting about this is that when she does this chapter labeling, the central date is always the school shooting. When the chapter title is "2 weeks before" it means that the events in that chapter happened two weeks before Peter Houghton shot up his school. Within the chapters Picoult also keeps it organized whenever she switches viewpoints, skipping a line so as to symbolize someone else speaking.

I also love how she uses the switching around of time periods to explore the depth and background of the characters. Without those little sections like the one about Peter's first day of kindegarten and getting his Superman lunchbox thrown out the window, Peter would just be seen as some sort of maniac by the reader, instead of the sad, victim of bullying that lasted throughout his first day of school to his last. The book truly makes one emphasize with Peter, he was picked on at school simply because he looked weak, and at home he was neglected, constantly being asked why he wasn't more like his brother. Although these experiences don't justify him killing people, the entire book would be off without Picoult's ability design her characters in such a way.

As for the ending, another trend I've noticed in Jodi Picoult's books is that sometimes the endings seem to be out of the blue. For example, in My Sister's Keeper, the entire book you are lead to think that at any minute Kate, the one who has Leukemia, could die. However in the end, Anna gets in a car crash and is killed, with her organs going to Kate to save her life. This ending was disliked by many readers and when the book was adapted into a film, they changed it so that Kate was the one who died in the end. However, I really liked the ending of Nineteen Minutes. The entire book we've been wondering what happened to Josie during the shooting, since she has no memory of it. The plot twist of Josie being the one who shot Matt was actually led up to by certain moments that had seemed unimportant at the time when they were given too us, times when Matt was just a bit too possesive, or he even seemed to be becoming abusive.

I can go on about what I loved about this book, these were just some of my favorite moments.

I would reccomend this book to anyone who can handle the topic of a school shooting, as well as a bit of a longer and probably more serious read.