Nineteen Minutes

Everyone reads Jodi Picoult – but me. So I picked up one her latest books, Nineteen Minutes, and read it over the weekend. Yes, it is 480 pages but it really is a quick read. The central character is a young man who has been bullied and tormented by his classmates his entire life. The bullying started the moment Peter stepped on the bus for his first day of school and it never stopped. He had one friend, a best friend, but she abandoned him when she started running with the popular crowd. One day, he takes four guns to his high school and kills 10 people. In flashbacks, we see how his teachers and his parents failed him. Several of the students killed were ones who had tormented Peter. Do they bear any responsibility for the tragedy? This is a great intergenerational discussion book.