In our most recent book club venture, we read Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes. As someone who has more than a few of her books on my bookshelf, I have to say I wasn’t as impressed as expected. I used to love Picoult’s novels and even remember reading an excerpt of Nineteen Minutes in the back of one of her books and was dying to read it but was slightly disappointed with it overall.
Nineteen Minutes is about a school shooting, published in 2007, so it was before these sort of shootings, unfortunately, were common. That being said, I can imagine it was pretty controversial and an exciting read back then just due to its subject material. One of the Broke Girls pointed out how numb we have become to school shootings, or any public shootings for that matter, because of how often they occur in our nation. However, it is still very much a matter worth discussing. In our discussion, we talked about shootings in a new light, not just focusing on gun control or mental illness. It made for a pretty interesting conversation and it was almost nice to talk these kind of issues without the looming shadow of a recent tragedy.
I think the best part of Nineteen Minutes for us was opening up a spirited conversation. It seems in recent months, we struggled to converse about the book at hand, whereas this month’s novel had us bouncing around from writing style, school shootings, bullying, parenting, and other numerous topics. Some of us loved the way Picoult writes…with lots of details and bouncing around from who is narrating to find out the “real story”, some of us found it predictable. Like I said, I’m generally a Picoult fan, but because of this I have become accustomed to how she writes her plots and always expect a “crazy twist” at the end. So, I found the story predictable and had figured out the ending pretty early on.
Should you read it? I would say yes. While there’s definitely other Picoult novels I would recommend over Nineteen Minutes, we cannot ignore the growing problem of school shootings in this country. I think it offers a unique perspective on the subject material and could change the way you think on the matter. I had a friend tell me that this was a required reading for her in high school. I was a little bit shocked that a school would support reading this, but I also think it could help address problems that would help deter an incident. As long as you can deal with changing, multiple viewpoints that skip from past to present often and overly detailed descriptions, I’d say give it a go!
Next month we’re switching things up by reading our first dystopian novel, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Will Sci-Fi be a welcomed changed for the Broke Girls? We’ll let you know at the end of October! Meanwhile, have you ever read Nineteen Minutes or Ready Player One? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!
