nineteen minutes a novel
Nineteen Minutes: A Novel
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $19.14
Your Save: $ 7.81 ( 29% )
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743496728
ISBN: 0739480715
Label: Atria
Manufacturer: Atria
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2007-03-05
Publisher: Atria
Release Date: 2007-03-05
Studio: Atria
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Editorial Reviews:
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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....In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge. Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Readable, but formulaic
Comment: I've been reading Jodi Picoult's books since the early days, and have been wondering lately if she's just running out of time and material. I picture this woman running for a life on a treadmill, racing to crank out one or two books a year. While I understand that writing is a business for many people, I have respect for people like Wally Lamb who wait ten years for a good story to come along (and offer to give back the advace money when one doesn't).
OK, so now that I'm not expecting great literature from Picoult, I have to admit to enjoying this story, if not immensely. It's readable enough and considering the subject matter, not terribly intellectually or emotionally demanding. If that's what you want from a school shooting story, dig in!
I had frankly hoped for more, and I couldn't help but feel that Picoult has become a victim of her own popularity. The plots and characters seemed pulled from her earlier works. I think she tried for complexity by making the characters more morally ambiguous. IMHO, it backfires -- Josie comes out looking like a brat, Alex a flake and Peter like a cookie cutter villain assembled from internet sites on school-shooters. By the middle of the book, I thought that maybe I had figured out the trademark Picoult surprise twist. I hoped for the next two hundred pages I was wrong. I was right.
This book suffered from other annoyances that have cropped up in Picoult's recent works, a superfluous love story (my only beef with the otherwise superb My Sister's Keeper is repeated here, even more pointlessly). There is also a ramping up of the saccharine parent-child love prose that was acceptable in MSK, getting annoying in The Tenth Circle, and here finally begins to assault my gag-reflex here. Yes. Parents love kids. But there are only so many paragraphs that can (or should) be devote to describing little Peter's kisses, or his chubby baby feet, or the handful of crushed flowers he gave mom as a toddler (not Picoult's exact images, but along those lines). This goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs, particularly in the last section. For crying out loud, Baby Boy has already grown up and gone on a killing spree! Give mom a more complex or ambiguous thought to grapple with.
If you're going to the beach and just want a light, fluffy read, this is the school shooting book for you. If you expect something dark, edgy, insightful, or provocative, it's going to look like pink cotton-candy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nineteen Minutes
Comment: I love this book, it is so very interesting that it is hard to put down!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Too Depressing
Comment: This book is just too depressing. I liked Plain Truth but this one didn't have anything happy in it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another Horrible Ending
Comment: I found this book intensely, compulsively readable, couldn't put it down, then found myself feeling cheated once we got to the end and the Picoult twist was revealed. (*SPOILERS*) I have to say, by the end of the novel, I could not stand the character of Josie, and the fact that she for some inexplicable reason shot her boyfriend makes her completely despicable. I'm starting to wonder if Piccoult has a problem with teenage girls-I do note that her interviews state she is the mother of SONS-because she tends to paint all her adolescent female characters as completely unstable, irrational, and manipulative. I've read many of her novels and see this as a trend with her-from THE TENTH CIRCLE to SALEM FALLS to PLAIN TRUTH to THE PACT. Her female characters are so interchangeable they could all be the same person, too, in every book. What is with her demonization of girls? Did some evil girl accuse one of her sons of rape or something? You have to wonder, and I find it interesting that she's categorized as chick lit, her writing is the antithesis of feminist.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a very engaging read on a very tough subject
Comment: This was my first book by Jodi Picoult but had heard about her writing style. The subject matter was an extremely difficult one - and then is revealed through the viewpoint of all of the characters - both those that you are rooting for and even the "villains," for whom you end up somehow feeling great sympathy. Very well done and I've gone on to read other books by her as a result.
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