“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.” This is how Jodi Picoult starts Nineteen Minutes, by listing all of the small things that can happen in a short amount of time. Before approaching the big issue of what can happen.
This story approaches big issues the way most of her books do. It’s about a school shooting that takes place and in talking about that she talks about bullying, parenting, and how a life can change in just a blink of an eye. Peter is the name of the student who turns a gun on his peers and shows very little remorse after it. Lacy, his mother tries to process what could have happened so that her son would do something like this, without her having any idea it might happen.
One of the other main characters is Josie Cormier, a more popular girl who had been friends with Peter when he was young (there moms were friends) and was one of the surviving students. Her mother is the judge on the case and Josie is supposed to be a witness but has a hard time remembering what happened. The story examines the pressure that’s on different high school students, the loneliness and division that they can feel from talking to anyone else, and how there are times when teenagers truly can not see past high school. With all of the school shootings that have taken place this was a story that truly touched the heart and brought faces (although fictional faces) to these tragedies.
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