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- Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
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| Value for Money | 10/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall rating | 10/10 |
By Harriet Klausner on 10th Jan 2007
| Value for money | 10/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall value | 10/10 |
 Harriet Klausner's recommendation | |
Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult
Atria, March 2007, $26.00, 352 pp.
ISBN: 0743495728
It takes nineteen minutes to kill nine students and one teacher and wound 18 students to the extent that they need to be hospitalized. On March 6 2007, seventeen-year-old student Peter Haughton put a pipe bomb he constructed in a student's car as a diversion than went to Sterling High School where he shot a student on the steps, went into the cafeteria wounded and injured a few more, walked the hallways leading to the gym and into the locker room where his killing spree ended when police detective Patrick DuCharme ordered him by gunpoint to drop his weapon.
He was carrying two handguns, two shotguns, and some incendiary devices. Peter tells his lawyer that he killed those who made his life hell since he was in kindergarten when one of the bullies threw his lunchbox out of the school bus window. Peter has been systematically abused verbally, emotionally and physically for the last twelve years because he was a misfit who didn't fit in. His only friend Josie, the daughter of Judge Alex Cormier, was the catalyst that drove him over the edge. His only friend Josie dumped him to be one of the in-crowd and be Matt Reyson's girlfriend. Matt is the last person that Peter killed. His defense attorney Jordan McAfee has to plan a defense even though his client was caught on tape killing students and there were hundreds of witnesses who saw him do the shooting.
Jodi Picoult blends a legal thriller with a family drama and comes up with a fascinating (in a macabre way) work of mainstream fiction. The author doesn't ever excuse what Peter did but through the use of flashbacks and rotating perspectives shows how years of torture erupted in a killing spree. Although readers will loathe Peter for what he did, they will understand that it takes a village to raise a child and in the case of Sterling, New Hampshire, everyone, including his own parents, failed in some way.
Harriet Klausner
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