Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

On Tuesday, October 16, 2007, Fallston Branch’s Critics Without Credentials will discuss Jodi Picoult’s fictional tale about a school shooting, called “Nineteen Minutes.”

I don’t want to preempt the group’s discussion by betraying too much about the book here, but I do hope one or two of them leave a comment afterwards about how the discussion went. I am sure it is a very timely book, and one perhaps difficult to read, but very rewarding.

I thought I might list here some suggestions for similar books:

A Theory of Relativity by Jacqueline Mitchard
Readers with a preference for observing how families in turmoil deal with shocking situations will appreciate this novel of grieving grandparents locked in an anguished custody battle for the sole surviving daughter of parents lost in a car accident.

The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian
Jodi Picoult writes of hot-button issues as does Chris Bohjalian. This time the issue is the foster care system and mixed-race families. The devastating loss of their twin daughters in a flash flood turns the lives of Terry and Laura Sheldon upside down as their marriage is tested by grief, Terry's brief love affair, and their growing relationship with their foster child, a ten-year-old African American boy.

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Years after a friend was brutally murdered, Jo Becker is now married with a grown family, but when an old housemate moves nearby, Jo rekindles a relationship that takes her back to the past and threatens her future. This book asks the question, “How well do we really know our friends and the ones we care for?”

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
In a series of letters to her estranged husband, narrator Eva Khatchadourian relates the stories of her son’s upbringing and tries to resolve an agonizing question. Two years before the opening of the novel, her son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and the much-beloved teacher who had tried to befriend him. Eva is tortured by the question of who is to blame.