Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult's Book Nineteen Minutes from the cover looks like it is going to be about two young children! Well it is not, in the way we would expect it to be. It is about a group of children, and one boy Peter in particular who, like many children is the child who is always not good enough as he sees it, in his parents eyes. His older brother is a Grade A student and is amazing at sport and anything else he turns his hands to. Peter on the other hand is bullied from the day he starts school, in fact as soon as he gets on the school bus - the bigger boys throw his lunch box out the school bus window and so the story starts.

But we realy see what is happening to him when he goes to what we in England would call senior school. Peter has few friends except Josie who he works with after school in a local photo-copy shop where they become closer and have a bit of fun when they are doing a number of photo-copies which they discover are for their school. Josie has a steady boyfriend who is a leading player on one of the sports teams, for the school and is Matt is hoping to win a schollorship to Varsity from School. Peter does not like the fact that Josie has chosen Matt and that she hangs around with him all the time. In class there are various groups which naturally happen in any school, the sporty, brainy and those that just don't fit. Peter is one of the don't fit in to any group.

Then something happens at the school - which brings out the natural question WHY?

I found this book strange in some ways because in one chapter you are in the present and the next you are looking back at what happend to the charactors a few years before. But I have to agree, this book by Jodi Picoult does not shy away from fictional controversy; in fact, the more tangled and messy a moral dilemma appears then the better Jodi can spin the fast paced tales of a dysfunctional family, who have betrayed their son, and as she weaves you deeper into the plot you just have to stay with it till the end.