2008-11-07 Disappointed Jodie Picoult fan

Like most people, my first introduction to JP was My Sister's Keeper - an excellent book, which had me in tears throughout. But the more I've read of JP, the more disappointed I get. Her work is very formulaic - a tragedy occurs (the kind that shocks middle America), then we have flashbacks to explain why it occurred, some kind of court case, and then the inevitable twist at the end. Nineteen Minutes repeats this formula - and a little lazily, in my opinion.

To me, the main problem was that it was overly long - cutting a good 100-150 pages would have quickened the pace, and I almost found myself forgetting how close Peter & Josie were as children. There seemed to be an awful lot of unnecessary padding, such as the relationship between Alex & Patrick (whose name was far too similar to Peter's!)

Something I've always liked about JP's books before was the way they change perspective - showing different people's viewpoints on the same subject. But I think that technique was overused in this book. There were some unnecessary characters - Patrick! - whose opinions didn't seem to add very much. I think this was reflected in the structure of the book, where there weren't proper chapters, but whole chunks of text (50 pages at a time), just swapping from one person to the other every one and a half pages. Also, there seemed to be less dialogue and scenes, and too much internal monologues repeating the same point.

In general, I think the writing techniques that JP has employed so well in other books were overused here. For example, at the end of certain scenes she'll put a "deep" conclusion: "he... pushed through the front door of the school, as if he might be able to save them both"; "a gun was nothing, really, without a person behind it". I could go on - but you'll be familiar with the technique if you've read her books. And, this time, it just got too much for me.

I agree with others that 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is a superior book to this. But I would also add that, while both books are based around school shootings, they really are about different things - "We Need to..." is really an examination of nurture versus nature (Lionel Shriver originally wrote it because she was trying to decide whether to get pregnant), while '19 Minutes' is very much about bullying. This theme of bullying seems to be an obsession with JP - The Tenth Circle is also all about high school popularity. I would just question how conscious the popular kids are of their popularity - Matt basically says he picks on others to secure his own place on the hierarchy, but personally I think teenagers like that just ARE popular, it's something they just accept. But I guess that is the thing about JP as a writer - and why I've still given this 3 stars - she does have that ability to make you think about her topics long after you've finished them!