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"Nineteen Minutes"
Jodi Picoult
Artria Books, $26.95 (hardcover)
Because of the recent devastation in Blacksburg, Va., I can't decide if reading a book that delves into the why of a school shooting is more comforting — giving a window into the mind of a killer to show how it all started — or depressing — knowing that there might not be anything to stop this from ever happening again.
"Nineteen Minutes" is Jodi Picoult's 14th novel. She tells the story of the storybook town of Sterling, N.H., and how the high school and the town are devastated when one of the students goes on a shooting rampage that lasts 19 minutes and results in 10 deaths, 19 injuries and an untold number of lives changed forever.
As is Picoult's style, she focuses her story on multiple characters and their relationships with each other. There's Josie, whose single mother Alex has worked her way up to being a judge, but has failed at providing a family life for her daughter. And there's Peter, the social outcast who has never lived up to be as good as his brother Joey, even though mother Lacy has given him love and support.
Josie is like any other teenager, trying to find her niche in high school life, but perhaps only finding that the only way she fits is to pretend to be a person she is not — pretending to be the person her "friends" want her to be. She is in the popular group. Her boyfriend is a varsity hockey player. She is pretty. She is skinny. She is unhappy.
Peter and Josie used to be friends — until Josie realized that it was easier to make fun of Peter with everyone else in the school, rather than to try to defend him and be his friend. Peter drifts into the cracks of high school. And in 19 minutes, he gets revenge.
Picoult often tells her books by starting at the beginning and telling the stories by way of what is currently happening and flashbacks to other events that have affected the way things are now. Because of the nature of this story — the crime, the impending trial, the mystery of what really happened that day — it closely resembles her 1998 novel "The Pact" (the same defense lawyer and investigator even return to this novel). The past and the present meet in the final chapter, when the whole story of the crime is told. And like Chris Harte in "The Pact," we know that Peter Houghton is guilty the whole time we are reading — what we don't know is how the defense, prosecution and jury will interpret the word guilty.
But it is disturbing to think that something as insane and disheartening as a school shooting could be the logical conclusion of any turn of events. No person who is mentally stable and balanced could even consider committing any sort of destruction of that magnitude. This is where Picoult is genius. She takes topics that are difficult to talk about and gives them a story, a start for a discussion. This is how everything started, this could be the cause of all school shootings. And, like in most of her stories, she cannot give a solution because the problem is not black and white, and too many shades of gray make it impossible to come up with any sort of simple fix.
I usually have few or no complaints about Picoult's work because she ties up all the loose ends, and everything she writes has a reason that might only appear later in the book. However, this time, I found inconsistencies — most notably when she mentions a boy in the room for the prosecution's witnesses, only to have another boy talk about watching him die the day of the school shooting. And I don't know if she ran out of time or space or couldn't find the place most appropriate to put it, but there was never any reason given for why some of the students became casualties of Peter's rage.
The end of the book is unsettling. She takes less than three pages to discuss how things are one year later. And she only needs that much space because nothing has changed — the social hierarchy remains, the nerds are pushed aside from the popular kids, there is no cohesion in the school that had witnessed a tragedy a year earlier. And that might be even sadder than the fact that it happened at all.
"A Density of Souls"
Christopher Rice
Pan, $13.00
If Christopher Rice's parents weren't famous, I fail to see how he would have had a New York Times bestseller with "A Density of Souls"
His novel is the story of four friends. And their parents. And their teachers. And their classmates. And their lovers. The story follows them from pre-puberty up to their early 20s. And like any over-dramatic story, it includes love, friendship, alcohol, violence, hate, abuse, alcohol, sex, psychiatric hospitals, alcohol, alcohol poisoning, guns, death, rebellion, natural disasters and alcohol.
Basically, it's a soap opera squeezed into 288 pages. If that description turns you off from reading it, you're welcome for saving a few hours of your life that you might have otherwise spent gasping at the ridiculousness of this novel.
Every event that happens in the story is painted up through excessive description and dramatic dialouge as if what has just occurred will change the world:
Then Meredith heard it. A human, female wail, a torrent of vocal pain she had never heard given breath before. Meredith felt the wail pass through her body. She trembled. For a brief instant, it was as if the sound had ripped the black veil across Meredith's own grief.
An ambulance's sirens devoured the woman's screams. (91)
The characters yell and fight in conversations that would be discussed in a normal tone of voice in real life. They drink alcohol as much as they inhale oxygen. They fight and hit and punch as if they all have anger control problems — except for one character who mostly chooses to drink bottles of Stoli every night while writing in a secret journal, presumably hidden under her mattress (yeah, like anyone's ever NOT checked there for a diary).
Rice jumps around with his primary character, the one who is telling the story. While it would make sense for him to switch between the four characters who are supposed to be the stars who share a secret, he also jumps to the mom, the brother, the teacher, the jock — but they only tell the story while they are necessary to be in it.
Rice's book asserts that the jock would not exist if it were not for the homosexual because he needs him to be his opposite in the social order to prove his dominance. He shows this in the typical, generic high school way, where the jocks tease the homosexuals and call them names. But he also brings in a more disgusting, sexual description of how the social relationships between these two groups work, going too far with even the idea of that being a normal activity and with the graphic description of what happens between the boys.
A good story has developed, meaningful relationships between the characters because those are what keeps the reader interested in what happens to them. But the relationships between the four main characters is hardly explained. The only reason we learn anything about those friendships is because they are explained in the final section of the book — if the reader even makes it there.
Rice tries to pull the reader in by saying things such as Meredith will hurt Brandon if he ever goes near Stephen, and Meredith knows there's something about the boys that will always leave her out of the group, and Stephen knows the secrets about Brandon and Greg, and Jordan knows something is going on with Brandon but Elise won't tell him where he is, and more and more and more and more. Rice hides all of these secrets until the end of the book, but, just as with a soap opera, it wouldn't be hard to walk away in the middle of the story without missing what you didn't know about them or where they will go next.
The book is drowned in alcohol and depression. The only reason I could find to read it is so you can laugh at the ridiculousness of the drama and the way the characters yell and overreact about every event they encounter.
New York Times Bestseller? Really? Maybe it's easier to make that list than I thought. Maybe all you need is a famous last name.
"The World's Shortest Stories"
edited by Steve Moss
Running Press, $8.95
The world’s shortest stories, told in 55 words.
Some will make you laugh, some will make you gasp, some will make you think. Only a few I didn’t like.
It will make you wonder if you can write a story in 55 words.
A wonderful collection combined into the perfect coffee table book.
Read it.
"The Tenth Circle"
Jodi Picoult
Washington Square Press, $15
As usual, Jodi Picoult does not steer away from controversial, sensitive topics in "The Tenth Circle," with topics such as rape, self destruction, lying, cheating and death gracing the 387 pages of her thirteenth novel.
Trixie Stone is 14 and heartbroken. Stay-at-home Dad Daniel knows something is different about his daughter, but he is hardly willing to accept that she is growing up and growing away from him. And he knows something is different about his wife Laura, who we meet in the middle of an extra marital affair in the opening pages of the story.
So like any teenager who is sad about her first love, Trixie wants to get him back and tries to do so by making him jealous. The boy ends up raping her — so Trixie says. How could she have known that he would only want her back for one night instead of back for good, even after she dressed up and flirted and did everything she thought was right in high school relationships.
Picoult fabulously paints the picture of a family who is hurting — the way their individual situations have affected them and the way it has affected their relationships with each other. I found myself being able to relate to each of them, recalling times when I had felt broken or had loved someone who felt broken and how that changed the dynamics of our relationship and how it felt to try to fix it.
Picoult's idea of the rape that might not have been a rape is fascinating. What other crime is there in our society that has physical evidence that could mean nothing but could mean everything, that is dependent on the interpretation of actions, words, the looks on the faces of the plantiff and defendant. Nothing could have worked better into her story because it reinforces the idea that the truth is in the eye of the beholder and changes every time a story is told, especially if the one who is holding the secret isn't sure if she is lying to herself.
Although I have criticized her in the past for spending too much time talking about the side stories, I found myself wanting more this time around. We learn about Trixie's best friend Zephyr, but her story tapers off in the end. We hear part of the Stone family's story from the detective Mike Bartholemew, who has his own depressing tale of losing his daughter, but we don't know if he finds any answers or gets any resolve through Trixie's story. Seth, the object of Laura's forbidden affection, might have played one of the most important roles in the novel, but he disappears as if he didn't matter — which, to the family, he didn't. And Willie, who offers Trixie help when she gets to her lowest, is only in the story long enough to help bring her back up.
Picoult says "The Tenth Circle" is not a departure from her usual, but I would disagree. Her other novels end when the story ends, but this one stops at the end of a story within the larger story. The Stone family makes their way to hell and back, but the demons are still there when they return home, and the reader will never know how they make it out of that fight.
But this had to be a departure from Picoult's usual. It was the first time I haven't cried when I get to the ending. This story wasn't my favorite, but it is one that I will remember.
