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Loading... Nineteen Minutes: A Novel (original 2007; edition 2007)by Jodi Picoult
Work InformationNineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (2007)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Best friends Alex Cormier, a judge and Lacy Houghton, a midwife, meet when their children Josie Cormier and Peter Houghton are young. Both children deal in different ways to try to fit in with the popular crowd that dominates school social life, while both mothers are more or less oblivious to their children’s emotional struggles. Picoult’s craft is top-notch. She spins a compelling story, including meticulous legal procedures, clearly draws her characters, brings them to life using individualized details. While it’s a captivating read, don’t expect to find any new and original insights into the social lives of children or parenting. I remember sitting down to read this book on my break, and the next thing I know, I'm 15 minutes past my time. This book grabs you from the beginning because of the sheer violence from the first page. You have to know what happens. A little further in, it slows down, but you are already invested, and have to see through to the conclusion. Oh, and the conclusion? That's a doozy. Just like the other ones that I've read, she saves that really hard twist for the very last chapter, where are left gasping. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesPiper (5398) Is contained inMy Sister's Keeper; Plain Truth; Nineteen Minutes; Salem Fall's; Perfect Match; The Pact; Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and Small Great Things 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 happensâ??until the day its complacency is shattered by a school shooting. 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 eyesâ??or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to showâ??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 se No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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We do not, nor can we ever know where someone's breaking point is and all the goodness brought to that person, all the appeals of love and understanding, may not be enough. We all think it couldn't or wouldn't be our child who could commit such a heinous act as a mass shooting, but what if...?
What if it were your child who was bullied to the point of breaking? What if a never-ending drip of "soft" violence (a push, a shove, a spitball, a noogy, a trip, an upturned lunch tray, a word "fag," "homo," "dyke," "fatty," "stinky," a mass email of humiliation were sent to an entire school) occurred to a child continuously until they suffered post-traumatic stress to the point of withdrawal, living in their own world (computers, gaming, anywhere to escape the meanness of the "cool kids"), until one day they snapped -- could you see that happening? I can.
This book hurt me deep in places I have tried to forget, didn't know other people knew, and was shocked to read about. I have been that broken child and have seen my children go through brutal punishment to be accepted, and sometimes worse, not accepted. I have seen my baby's soft, loving eyes turn hard, black, hateful at the hands of bullies. This is real.
Does it mean all bullied children will become murderers or that this is an acceptable reason to murder - let's not be naive. The point: This is out there. This is happening. We cannot just ban the book because it speaks graphically of violence and think that will make the violence or the events leading up to it go away. On the contrary. We should all read this book. Feel those feelings. Empathize with the pain, the hurt, the life that the least of these feel. No one is above being bullied.
God help us if we keep turning away from reality and not holding initiators of bullying accountable. Read the book. Then go sit and reflect. We must and we can do better.
Remember, young bullies turn into old ones and they run the world. ( )