Nineteen Minutes

     The book Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult starts out with tragedy  Before you get to the 100th page you are lead to believe the climax has already happened. This tragedy is a small town school shooting where 10 people are killed, including some teachers and 19 were wounded. As you read on you realize how the complex relationships of the characters affect the shooting and the thing that stands out to me most is the writing style that Jodi Picoult decides to use.

     Her writing style consists of her giving a different person's story in every section and letting us in on more key info. She jumps around in different time periods too, giving us a chapter from 17 years prior to the shooting up until 6 days after the shootings, from 8 years before to a month after. The perspectives most given are the ones of Alex, Josie, Peter, Patrick and Lacy. The views of Lewis and Jordan are sometimes given as well. Lacy and Lewis are the parents of Peter, the 17 year old shooter and Jordan his the attorney defending him in the case. Josie is Peter's childhood best friend who ditched him a few years back and Alex is her mom who is also the town's judge. Patrick is the town detective who is in charge of this case. Aside from those main characters you are also given the point of view of other victim's, their families, experts, and random people from the school and town.

     By writing the novel this was Jodi Picoult accomplishes a lot. I think it makes her writing a lot stronger and makes the reader think more about what she is saying. This happens because she uses so many different perspectives that the different opinions of the different people ought to be able to relate to by all of the different readers of this book. In doing this I also think that it helps her to convey a bigger picture message that helps the reader understand why school shootings happen. It talks about this tragic incident by also informing the reader of the prevention ways and informing readers of what happens post and what leads up to school shootings.

     So far, even though this book is very sad I am finding myself enjoying it. It is very engaging and I am intrigued by the mystery and suspense of it all. I am enjoying it very much so far and I cannot wait to read on and see what interesting plot twists and character changes that occur in the future!