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Nineteen Minutes
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| List Price: | £14.99 |
| Price: | £9.19 |
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Product Description
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens – until a student enters the local high school with an arsenal of guns and starts shooting, changing the lives of everyone inside and out. The daughter of the judge sitting on the case is the state’s best witness – but she can’t remember what happened in front of her own eyes. Or can she?
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #11325 in Books
- Published on: 2007-04-19
- Original language: English
- Binding: Hardcover
- 512 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
'Jodi Picoult is not one to shy away from fictional controversy; in fact, the more tangled and messy a moral dilemma appears, the better she likes it. (Daily Mail )
'Picoult has been incredibly successful in dissecting the pain that family members go through when faced with sensitive and emotive issues' ( Daily Express )
'Picoult, once again, grabs a razor-sharp issue and uses her brilliantly intricate pen to expose all the shades of grey with PERFECTION.'
(Cosmopolitan )'This is powerful writing ... Set against a fascinating legal backdrop, providing twists and turns at every stage, Nineteen Minutes is an utterly compelling novel: Picoult at her very best'
(Waterstone's Magazine )'impossible to put down and stayed in my mind long after I had finished'
(Observer )'Slick, emotive and as readable as ever.'
(Daily Mail )'Her unique ability to take a life-changing incident and explore it from all angles with empathy is fast becoming her trademark. It makes this an intriguing and moving read.'
(TheLondonPaper )'This gripping, sensitive book looks at the aftermath; the effect on Peter himself, his mother, his victims, the girl he was in love with, and the shock for the small-town community. INTENSELY POWERFUL.'
(Easy Living )'Superb, many-stranded and grimly topical . . . Picoult binds together precarious alliances with sensitivity, giving depth to characters without losing pace. Inhabited by contradictory, flawed individuals, this intelligent novel draws suspense, moral complexity and a stunning final twist out of what initially seemed a monochrome situation'
(The Times )
Synopsis
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until a student enters the local high school with an arsenal of guns and starts shooting, changing the lives of everyone inside and out. The daughter of the judge sitting on the case is the state's best witness -- but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. Or can she? >
About the Author
Jodi Picoult grew up in Nesconset, New York. She received an A.B. in creative writing from Princeton and a master`s degree in education from Harvard. Her previous novels include Keeping Faith, The Pact, and Mercy. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.
Customer Reviews
Gobsmackingly GOOD
WOW what a story and so beautifully written and soo sad..
I have read "My Sisters Keeper" and loved that but this is so much better.
Read it a weep for all the characters
Stunning read
I have finished this book in a few days and it is long but I never felt it was padded out or dragging, in fact I am glad there was so much to read! I loved the way it is written from so many different characters' perspectives, all the way through, and that we don't stay with any one person for more than a page or two so it really moves along and grips you, and also how the narrative cleverly moves back and forwards in time, so that we view the current events, then we learn about the history and early life of some of the key characters, and then we come back to the present - brilliant structure and ideal for this story.
The tragic premise is of a school shooting by a lonely boy, Peter, who has been bullied throughout his schooldays for being 'different' and can't take anymore torment. But intriguingly, Picoult allows us to hear his thoughts as well as those of the victims, and his parents, his former friend, Josie, who is not all that she at first seems in that she also does not fit into the social groups of the school as well as she pretends to do. Additionally we have the viewpoints of the lawyer defending Peter, Josie's mother who is also a local Judge, the detective who arrives at the crime scene just as the shootings have happened. The soul searching of Lacy, Peter's mother, which we witness, is heartbreaking, and equally as heartbreaking, his father, who ironically has a career studying happiness, when he realises what an unhappy isolated son he has.
The build up and the trial is all gripping stuff. I did guess part way through what the final twist was going to be based upon, but that didn't deter me at all from continuing. A very compelling novel, one that made me pick it up at every spare second to get back to the events and the next happenings!
I've read one other Picoult and was impressed by that, and Nineteen Minutes was also very impressive at what it tries to do, namely tell an intriguing, emotional, painful story and invite the reader to think about how they themselves would judge this situation, and it certainly does succeed in making you think about these tragic events from many different angles.
UN PUT DOWN-ABLE!
i'll make this short and sweet.
After reading 'my sisters keeper', also by Jodi Piccoult, I never thought that i'd find a better book.....until i read this!
Don't be daunted by the fact that its a big book, i read it in a few days, and i found that even when i wasnt reading it, i was thinking about it!
This is DEFINITELY my favourite read and i recommend it to anyone that wants an un-forgetable book!
20/10!
