"Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Picoult

455 pages

On the morning of March 16, bullied teenager Peter Houghton goes on a shooting spree at Sterling High School, killing ten people (nine students and a teacher) and wounding many others. The book begins with the shooting and then goes back and forth in time to describe the events leading up to the massacre--from the time Peter was in the womb--and the aftermath of the event. Readers see the perspectives of several characters, including Josie Cormier, a popular student who was close to Peter as a child and injured in the shooting; Alex, Josie's mother, who is a superior court judge; Lacy, Peter's mother, who can't understand how her son became a murderer; and Patrick, a local detective who works on the investigation. At the end of the book, the details of the actual shooting finally come out.

I am still trying to figure out how I feel about "Nineteen Minutes" because it left me with so much to think about that it's going to take a while to sort out. At this point, my opinion is that although there are parts that are over-the-top with the drama (making some aspects seem unrealistic), this is a very interesting book. As she does in most of her books, Picoult takes a very controversial real-life issue and shows several aspects of it through a compelling fictional story. Bullying, mental illness, peer pressure, grief, guilt, drug use, homophobia, single parenting...there's a lot going on in this thing. Instead of portraying schools shootings as a clear-cut, black-and-white issue, Picoult shows the gray areas. I sympathized with almost every character--including Peter--at some point, and I also felt angry at almost every character at some point. Picoult does a great job of humanizing Peter without letting him off the hook for what he does. Perhaps "humanizing" isn't the right word--it's like she shows how Peter was dehumanized by the abuse he took from his classmates but doesn't take all of the blame off him (as lots of kids are bullied but most of them don't kill people because of it). The book is relatively dense and short on dialogue, yet somehow it seemed to move quickly and I couldn't put it down. I also enjoyed the big twist at the end and thought it was a satisfying conclusion. This is one that will stick with me for a while.