Nineteen Minutes

I was in my local second-hand bookstore one day when I stumbled across a novel that had been on the Top 10 list at my school last year, Nineteen Minutes. After seeing the low price and remembering how my peers had raved about how majestic it supposedly was, I finally decided to buy it. After all, how boring could a book about a school shooting be?

Now I’m going to be honest and say that this was my first experience with Jodi Picoult’s novels. I know she’s written many books and is highly praised, and she definitely has talent, but Nineteen Minutes was not the piece of magic my peers had made it out to be, yet… it isn’t a complete waste of time either.

The entire plot of this novel is constructed around a high school massacre. It involves the events leading up to the tragedy, the tragedy itself, and what happens afterwards. As I made my way past the first few pages and immersed myself in the descriptions of the chaos, I thought that this would be one of the best I had read in a long time. But the farther I went on, and saw the direction this book was heading in, the more I realized that Nineteen Minutes had so much more potential.

First of all, I must praise Picoult for having the courage to tackle such a sensitive issue. There are many authors who wouldn’t have the stamina to even attempt a plot about a high school massacre, and I admire Picoult for her bravery.

Nineteen Minutes tells a fairly straightforward account of what could drive a student to commit such an atrocious act and turn against their fellow classmates. The shooter, Peter Houghton, has been the victim of bullying and humiliation for his entire school career, and has easy access to guns. Even though the plot isn’t as imaginative as it could potentially be, there is complexity in the way that the narrative moves backwards and forwards as the shooting and the aftermath are recounted, especially from Peter’s viewpoint.

And I can not forget Josie Cormier, the daughter of the locally famous Judge. While I found her character to be interesting, I couldn’t help but be bristled at how much of a cliché her character was. Her and Peter were best friends in preschool and elementary school, spent every minute together, and she adored him. But then, in the famous world of middle-school, she ditches Peter and joins the popular group. While some of her parts added to the book’s plot, others were filled with her soap opera romance with the one of the most desirable guys at her school. The romance had nothing to do with the main focus of the book at all, and it really took the reader away from the whole moral of the story.

One thing that does make this book stand out is Picoult’s attempts to get the reader to understand Peter, instead of simply making him out to be the monster. Both sides of the story are shown until the reader’s sympathies are torn. I know mine were, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Peter after discovering his story. But yet, Peter’s characterization could have been described more to suit the plot. In the general just of things, Nineteen Minutes shies away from it’s central concern, which the overall assumption is to open up the debate about violence in schools and why these events occur in relatively well-off areas in small-town America. Peter’s bullies are also given little psychological depth. Picoult tends to simply describe their actions, instead of describing why they did what they did.

Peter’s relationship with his parents was given a generous amount of space, but I there still could have been developed more closely. Again, it seemed that in places Picoult was describing their actions instead of the thoughts behind them. Yet the role of the parents that raise the murderer is a welcome perspective to the book that ultimately gives it more character. The description of Peter’s mother, Lacy, is heaped with irony as the reader discovers she is a midwife that is supposed to be knowledgeable about parenting. She’s portrayed to be as oblivious as she is kind to her son, and this lack of awareness could have been developed further at the cost of editing out some parts of a lesser role, Judge Alex Cormier.

I found that the role of Alex Cormier, the failing mother of Josie Cormier, distracting from the main plot. Her parts in the book are filled with things that have nothing to do with the shooting, and way too much time is spent explaining that she desires to be as good of a judge as her work-obsessed father was. To add on to that, her failing relationship with her daughter, Josie, and her love interest yank the reader even further away from the general plot. Cormier’s parts felt overdone, and have the affect of making the reader impatient for more insight into the thought process of the bullies and victims.

Since we know very little about the integral character of the rampaging teenagers who choose to commit such acts, Nineteen Minutes lacks surprises because of the insufficient space given to Peter’s interpretation of the world. To give Picoult credit though, there is a surprise twist at the end of the book that all readers should give her credit for, and proves she shouldn’t be underestimated.

It’s possible that all of the subplots in Nineteen Minutes that diverge from the school shooting are meant to give light to such a dark shade of a story, but they end up appearing as elements from a cheesy daytime soap opera. These sub-stories are unnecessary and greatly diminish Picoult’s ability to tell a fantastic tale. I’m not saying that romance is an invalid theme, but just that in this case it dilutes the big message this book is trying to send.

All in all, Nineteen Minutes is not a book to be taken for trash, but don’t be prepared to have your breath taken away. While the plot is enough to keep the reader curious enough to see it to the end, I’d rather recommend another one of her novels, My Sister’s Keeper, which is a far better example of Jodi Picoult’s work.