Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes
Picoult, Jodi, 2007.
Nineteen Minutes.
New York: Atria Books.
464 pages, hardcover.
$26.95
ISBN 9780743496728.

Format: book
Rating: 4.5/5.0 stars

Plot Summary

In small towns, residents’ lives are often intricately intertwined. Lacy is a mid-wife pregnant with Peter, and Alex is a public defense attorney is pregnant with her daughter Josie.

Jumping forward in time: Peter and Josie are grown and in high school. Once close friends, Josie would defend Peter before she chose the path of popularity and a well-known boyfriend, Matt. Peter is left to fend for himself. Making life even more unbearable is that Peter’s parents are still reeling from losing Peter’s older favored brother, Joey, so they often ignore him.

Peter isn’t Matt’s only bullying victim in this story. Josie and her mother don’t exactly connect, so when Matt abuses Josie, she keeps it from her mom. Ever so fearful of falling out from the popular crowd, Josie has her own plan if things go wrong – suicide.

The tipping point seems to be when Peter is publicly humiliated, as he thought he was meeting Josie for lunch because had has feelings for her. But her friends intercept the message, and Matt is waiting to belittle Peter once more, one too many times.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Peter is accused of killing ten people, nine classmates, including Matt, and a popular teacher, and wounding nineteen others. Alex is the judge, and Josie, the state’s best witness, can’t seem to remember anything. As the whole story is revealed, readers glimpse the raw emotion of being a teenager, being a victim and what happens when one fights back.

Critical Evaluation

Nineteen Minutes is told in flashes between present time, after the school shooting, and past time, with incidents leading up to and including the actual shooting. The combined use of handwritten script, suicide-like notes, along with flashbacks allows the reader to see the comprehensive story of Peter’s life played out. While it certainly doesn’t justify his final actions, it does leave the reader with a better understanding of the edge that he was pushed to and then over during his school years – in a small town where everyone knows everything, but they don’t always step forward to stop it.

The story spotlights the effects bullying has on its victims, as well as an inside view of popularity and what it means or how much has to be given up to fit in. Relationships in all their complexity are revealed, especially those of family. Critical ideas on parenting and the causes of this tragedy are shown in such a way that town folks see their role in this tragic, life-defining event.

In typical Picoult-fashion, the story’s many sub-plots keep the reader captivated and sometimes confused until the twisting, fateful ending, which she always has.

Reader’s Annotation

Nineteen minutes is enough time to accomplish a lot of little tasks – or one big, life-changing event – like Peter did when he decided to get revenge for all of the years of torment. While this school shooting in rural New Hampshire may seem like it is the end of this story, it is really only the beginning.

Information About the Author
Jodi Picoult was born in 1966 in New York and moved with her family to New Hampshire while she was still in her teens. She has been a writer since age five and studied the craft at Princeton University graduating in 1987. She earned a master's in education from Harvard and taught middle school English.

Since 1992, she has become the bestselling author of 18 novels; her books have sold 14 million copies worldwide sold in 34 languages in 35 countries. Her popular titles include: The Pact, Plain Truth, The Tenth Circle, and Salem Falls, which were all made into Lifetime original movies, and My Sister's Keeper was produced as a feature film. She has also published Change of Heart, Picture Perfect, Handle with Care, House Rules, and her most recent publication: Sing You Home.

She resides in Hanover, NH with her husband, Ted and their three children along with a mix of animals including Springer spaniels, geese, a duck, chickens, donkeys and an occasional Holstein.

(Picoult, 2011)

Genre
Fiction: Issues – multiple issues

Read-Alikes
The Hate List by Jennifer Brown
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Curriculum Ties
This book ties with health issues and how decisions make an impact on a person’s well being. Its strength deals honestly with bullying and the ramifications of abuse, covering several different types of victims: the public and the silent.

Booktalking Ideas
1) Lucy looking for Peter at school and being told that he was the shooter
2) conversation between Josie and Patrick, the detective in charge of the case who happens to be dating her mom

Book Trailer Links
Book Trailer by the Author

Reading Level/Interest Age
Adult / YA cross-over

Challenge Issues
cliques, bullying, abuse, teen pregnancy, murder, crime and legal issues

First, I would share some of the recommendations used as part of the selection process, including reviews from resources as noted below. Next, I would point out the value in allowing these types of materials to be optional reading as teens grow ever closer to adulthood and making their own decisions. Finally, following our school district’s policy #KEC, after explaining that our school district’s philosophy is that no parent or group of parents has the right to determine the reading matter for children other than their own, I would refer the parent or community member to the building principal, so that he/she can file a written complaint to begin the process of review.

Awards
#1 New York Times bestseller

Why Title Included & Selection Tools
Nineteen Minutes has been included because in every school there are teens who feel bullied and sometimes reach their end, though fortunately they don’t all resort to the same revenge that Peter sought to make peace. This book allows for some in-depth conversations with teens about their decision-making and what might have gone wrong that Peter landed on the extreme end of the spectrum, killing his classmates.

Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, The Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor