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NINETEEN MINUTES
by Jodi Picoult
Hodder & Stoughton, April 2007
512 pages
14.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340935278


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Only Jodi Picoult would have the ability to take a multiple murderer and make of him a thoroughly sympathetic character. In this work, the author describes a school shooting in which ten people are killed and examines the situations that lead up to the horrific slaughter.

Peter Houghton is picked on from his very first day in kindergarten. While it is a difficult situation for the child, a situation that is not remedied as he grows older and remains the butt of other children's 'jokes', at least on that first day he has a protector, his good friend Josie Cormier.

Josie, too, is almost a misfit but that changes when she becomes the girlfriend of Matt Royston, a jock and one of Peter's tormentors. Josie, however, is no longer Peter's friend. Peter, when five years old was caught showing Josie his father's guns – a hands-on showing – so Josie's mother decrees the children will be friends no more.

Peter Houghton's mother Lacy is a midwife, his father an economist who had made his name in a most unusual fashion. He had derived a formula for happiness.

Patrick DuCharme is the sole detective in the Sterling police force. He is the first policeman on the scene of Peter's multiple murders and, in fact, disarms the boy.

Picoult, as is her wont, gives all her characters back stories. The reader is given the opportunity to get to know Josie's boyfriend Matt a little better as well as getting a glance at some of the other bullied children. Judge Alex, Josie's mother, has a large portion of the tale devoted to her, as do Lacy, Patrick and Peter's defence lawyer, Jordan MacAfee.

As always, Picoult has done a sterling job of portraying that town's characters. To my mind, her portrayal of Peter Houghton is a masterpiece, given that she has taken a horrible crime yet ensured the reader will be cheering the criminal on. She has managed to get inside the mind of teenagers (well, she is a mother, after all) and done a convincing job of bringing her creations to life.

There is a mystery within the novel that is not made clear at the outset. I have to confess that, despite a few hints along the way, I never guessed it.

Faithful readers will no doubt rejoice in the author's revival of characters from past novels: Patrick Ducharme from PERFECT MATCH and Jordan MacAfee from THE PACT and SALEM FALLS. I don't know about other readers but at the conclusion of a book, I am always left wondering as to possible further adventures of people who have captured my imagination.

I do have one small criticism which may really get back to my own dislike of fiction that reflects a bit too closely current events (and, after all , the release of NINETEEN MINUTES came at almost exactly the time when the latest university massacre occurred) but I felt that in places, the novel dragged a trifle and could have been edited a bit more severely.

It's unfortunate that such a topic must, by very definition, be depressing but if any author could make something which reverberates in the reader's mind palatable, Picoult is the one.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, May 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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