When was nineteen minutes published

It was impossible for me to not to fall in love with some characters and feel utter hate for the actions of others. I am purposely being vague about the storyline, as I cannot encourage you enough to go in totally blind for the most powerful and surprising effect. This is definitely one I will never forget!

Extremely well written and narrated! View all 95 comments. Jan 27, Lara rated it really liked it. Believe it or not, I have never actually read one of Jodi Piccoult's books before.

I'm not really sure why, but I haven't. Sometimes the perpetrator of a heinous crime is the biggest victim of them all. Reading the things that Peter went through sometimes brought me to tears. I have never understood how people can treat others so badly, and the behavior of the b Believe it or not, I have never actually read one of Jodi Piccoult's books before. I have never understood how people can treat others so badly, and the behavior of the bullies in this story was beyond the pale. It was easy to see how he could have been driven to do what he did, even though it was absolutely horrific.

High school is hard. I think most of us can look back on our high school days and remember struggling to fit in, remember the cruelty of some kids, and remember thinking that being "popular" meant you'd made it in life. Now, with my adult perspective, I can see how silly much of it was, but I remember that it was very real to me. I wasn't popular, but I did find my niche. I went through my share of teasing, and in the end I think it made me a stronger person, however I never endured anything like what Peter had to endure and I wonder how I would have gotten through something like that.

Nobody can judge a situation perfectly equitably. Not even a superior court judge. The storyline of Alex and her daughter showed that quite well, but so did the stories of most of the characters.

You can't judge only on face value, or even on actions only. Piccoult did an excellent job of playing Devil's advocate for every single character Schools may have a zero tolerance policy for bullying, but in reality, they turn a blind eye to much of it. I have experienced this a bit with Bria's schools.

I think it is impossible for the teachers and administration to really see what is going on all the time, but I do think that they need to be more aware of who is the bully and who is the victim. It was very sad and even gut wrenching to see how the teachers either didn't want to deal with Peter's situation, half heartedly dealt with it, encouraged it, or punished him right along with the bully.

I don't really know what the answer is, but it seems to me there's got to be something better. Peter's crime shouldn't be blamed on his parents, but they aren't guilt free, either. We can see that Peter's parents did what they thought was best, and they loved him.

However, from the time he was born, they constantly compared him to his older brother, who was seemingly perfect. It got to a point that Peter couldn't confide in them about the hurt he was experiencing, because they always asked why he couldn't just be like Joey. And then to have Joey killed tragically a year before Peter's shooting spree didn't help. Both parents eventually admitted to themselves that they would have rather had Peter been killed in the car accident instead of Joey.

I am pretty sure that kind of an attitude is evident to children, no matter how hard you try to hide it. Other mistakes these parents made were writing off Peter's anti social behaviors for normal teenage boy actions, and not really trying to have a relationship with him. Allowing him his privacy, instead of finding out what he was up to and what was going on in his life in a way that showed they truly were interested about him and truly cared.

They seemed to be the poster children for loving, but lazy, parenting. Which really isn't loving, actually. Likewise, Alex had issues being a mother, and it took a tragic event to help her to reevaluate her priorities and her actions as Josie's mother. I was happy she recognized her mistakes and worked to be better, but still, much of the damage had already been done. At least it wasn't as bad of a situation as Peter's parents were in, where the damage had all been done and there was no repairing any of it.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the mitigating circumstances are. The law is still the law. Alex dealt with this early in her career as a judge And of course, Peter and Josie needed to pay for their actions. That is the law. I don't think it could be any different, and of course, I don't excuse Peter for what he did. As the trial showed, there were other kids who were bullied just as much who didn't decide to shoot up the school.

There are so many other things I could say about this book. Piccoult is obviously very good at bringing up hot button societal issues and presenting them in a way that makes you really think. I am excited to read more of her novels. A few silly annoyances because I always have them : 1. One of the first times we meet Judge Alex Cormier is when she is pregnant with Josie and she fills out a form with her name: Alexandra Cormier.

Later in the book it talks about how her name isn't short for Alexandra like people assume. Well then, why would she fill out paperwork like that? People are constantly "pinching the bridge of their noses" in exasperation. I swear I read that phrase more than 5 times.

I didn't feel the twist at the end was sufficiently explained. Maybe the abusive relationship she sort of showed between Matt and Josie explains it. She foreshadowed a bit that something big was up, but I didn't feel that what Josie ultimately did made a ton of sense in the situation. Perhaps a bit more backstory on the relationship, or at the very least, on Josie's feelings about the relationship, would have made more sense to me.

As it was, I felt it was a bit out of place. Definitely twisty, though. So if that's what Piccoult was going for, then great.

View all 23 comments. Dec 16, Nilufer Ozmekik rated it it was amazing Shelves: best-thriller , favorite-wtf-mindfu-k-books. I reread this and I believe this is the best book the author has written!

Too many things can happen in 19 minutes This is sitting on the edge of your seat, busting your entire nails then your hands, getting jumpy, restless kind of memorable read with WTH I just read kind of shocking ending.

In one sit, your hands stay glued to your book and your beliefs, your look at the events will completely change! View all 4 comments. Jul 03, Madeline rated it did not like it Shelves: ugh , no-judgements. I feel that we had a good relationship. Sure, after the first exciting fling things got predictable pretty fast "gee, I wonder if this one will have dramatic courtroom scenes? Then I read Nineteen Minutes , and decided it was time to call it off.

One big problem with the book is that I was expected to think - or at least consider - that a kid being bullied for years is an excuse to shoot up a high school, killing not only the cliche popular jerks but also several innocent bystanders. I'm sorry, no. It didn't help that the bullied kid in question was utterly unlikable, as was his tragic friend with the abusive jock asshole boyfriend - every high school-related convention and cliche is used and run into the goddamned ground here, and it is unpleasant.

But here's the real reason the book gets one star, and I don't consider this a spoiler because I think people deserve to be warned about this: the morbid fascination of school shootings stems from, I believe, the mystery of why any kid would go to such an extreme. Since most of the people who commit this crime end up killing themselves, we never really know how or if they justified their actions.

With this in mind, pretend you're a writer working on a book about a school shooting, where the killer narrates some of the story. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a chapter where the reader gets to be inside the killer's head during the actual shooting, so they could understand his thought process and logic?

If you answered "well, duh," then congratulations, you are not Jodi Picoult. Throughout the entire book, we never, ever get to see the shooting through the bullied kid's eyes.

Why did he shoot the people who never harmed him, including a teacher who was kind to him and some random girl just walking in his line of fire? Did he feel any remorse during the shooting? What was he thinking? Why did he stop in the middle of his spree to sit down in the cafeteria and eat a bowl of cereal? We never find out, and this infuriated me so much Picoult might as well have ended the book with, "I'm Jodi Picoult and I get paid thousands of dollars to print out crap they sell in airport bookstores!

I do what I want, so fuck you! Fuck you , Jodi. People are only buying your damn book so they can get into the killer's head in the exact way I've described, and you're just screwing with them.

Not cool. View all 41 comments. My sophomore year of high school, a classmate of mine gave a presentation on this book saying it was her favorite of all time, and ever since then I've been interested in what she loved so much about it.

Books about school shootings have always intrigued me, but they're especially relevant today. I'm glad I read this book after I read A Mother's Reckoning because that gave such an insight to being in the critical spotlight as the mother of 3. I'm glad I read this book after I read A Mother's Reckoning because that gave such an insight to being in the critical spotlight as the mother of a school shooter and a lot of Sue's experiences were echoed in this book.

My lasting impression of this book rests on two things: 1. This book is now a bit dated. This shooting in the book occurred in , and the media and technology have evolved so much now that parts of this felt antiquated.

View all 3 comments. Aug 24, Elyse Walters rated it really liked it. Read this years ago — gripping towards the end!!! I thought it was very engaging - disturbing- honest - and the situations of how things unraveled were thought provoking Still remember it Dedicated to KAS Enjoyed her reaction to this book - her NOT being late to the party!!!

The story h Read this years ago — gripping towards the end!!! The story has stayed with me all these years! View all 9 comments.

This is a powerful read. After an act of violence is perpetuated at the local high school, those 19 minutes change a New Hampshire town forever. The writing is riveting and poignant. We are reading about the events leading up to the climax. The history of the individuals involved. Their mindset. It's a lot to take in. Especially because the good aren't all good and the bad aren't all bad. I think as readers, it puts us in a unique and introspective position as we are not shown only the parts tha This is a powerful read.

I think as readers, it puts us in a unique and introspective position as we are not shown only the parts that are convenient. The big picture isn't simple either. It's messy. It's emotional. It's heartbreaking. There are no winners. It makes you think about the signs you are possibly not seeing. The things you are saying or not saying for that matter. It makes you think about things done to you or things you may have done to others.

Although I predicted some of what turned out to be the twist in the story, I found myself utterly drawn in by the story. The characters were dynamic and complex. Layered very well. The plot dealt with a sensitive situation gracefully not taking short cuts and offering a well rounded perspective. The writing was just stellar. An absolute win. Safety: There is abuse and sex that doesn't always appear to be consensual. There is a lot of physical violence. View all 12 comments. Shelves: issue , contemporary , book-club , cried , psychology.

I tend to rate books by how much they make me think, how much they make me feel, and how much they draw me into their world. The book starts with the scene of a school shooting where you feel a disgust for the kid doing the shooting and sorrow for the victims but as you glean settings from flashbacks you come to sympathize with everyone in the book as a victim, each experiencing loss of I tend to rate books by how much they make me think, how much they make me feel, and how much they draw me into their world.

The book starts with the scene of a school shooting where you feel a disgust for the kid doing the shooting and sorrow for the victims but as you glean settings from flashbacks you come to sympathize with everyone in the book as a victim, each experiencing loss of different degrees. I can almost exactly correlate my feelings with the timeline of Columbine grief.

In that sense the raw emotions were very real. But in the exaggerated small outcast boy, the popular snotty girls, the stupid cruel jocks, the overprotective parents, and all the other stereotypes I found myself resisting relating to the characters. Sometimes it felt very real, but occasionally it felt like statistics especially with the random foreign last names.

As your emotions are pulled to sympathize with one person then the next, you're left with the questions of who to blame, who to feel sorry for in the wake of a tragedy. For me I have a natural tendency to defend the underdog, to want to understand what put the perpetrator over the edge, while still reserving a small amount of accountability for them.

It was obvious that Picoult seems to share the same allegiance to the bullied, but I would have liked to hear a little more about the stories of those who were shot and understand their motivations. I wanted to feel just as ashamed and saddened for them instead of focusing on aligning emotions with the ones the newscasters want to blame. Download cover. As emotionally charged as any she has written, Nineteen Minutes is one of her most powerful works to date. Set in a small town in the wake of a horrific school shooting, Nineteen Minutes features the return of two beloved Picoult characters - Jordan McAfee, the lawyer from The Pact and Salem Falls , who once again finds himself representing a boy who desperately needs someone on his side; and Patrick Ducharme, the intrepid detective introduced in Perfect Match , whose best witness is the daughter of the superior court judge assigned to the case.

As the story unfolds, layer after layer is peeled back to reveal some hard-hitting questions about the nature of justice, the balance of power and what it means to be different. Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, thought-provoking tale with a jaw-dropping finale. And I hated him. Some of us just do a better job of hiding it.

Is your identity determined by whom you hang with? What impact is there socially for choosing to be with some peers over others? Toggle navigation. Read an excerpt. Book club questions ». Nineteen Minutes Nineteen Minutes examines a school shooting in a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that asks a haunting question: Do we really ever know someone?

The Story Behind 19 Minutes. About Nineteen Minutes. Nineteen Minutes trailer. A conversation with Jodi about Nineteen Minutes. What drew you to the subject of school shootings for the premise of a novel? How did you go about conducting research for Nineteen Minutes? Given the heart wrenching and emotional topic of the book, in what ways was the research process more challenging than for your previous novels? What facts did you uncover during your research that might surprise readers whose knowledge of school shootings comes solely from media coverage?

What appealed to you about bringing back two characters from previous novels: defense lawyer Jordan McAfee and detective Patrick DuCharme? Why the romantic resolution for Patrick this time? In Nineteen Minutes , Lewis Houghton is a college professor whose area of expertise is the economics of happiness. Does such a profession actually exist?

As the mother of three children, was the subject of popularity and the cruel ways in which children often treat one another a difficult one for you to address? Did you have the surprise ending in mind when you began writing Nineteen Minutes, or did it evolve later in the process? As with all my books, I knew the ending before I wrote the first word.

As you write more and more books, is it harder to come up with ideas? How do you know when an idea is the right one? Many of your books center on topics that are front and center in the headlines. Is it important for you to not only entertain readers with a riveting storyline but to challenge them to think about timely and often controversial topics?

Why do you suppose you have gravitated toward this type of storytelling? Book club discussion questions for Nineteen Minutes. What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter? Alex often has trouble separating her roles as a judge and a mother. How does this affect her relationship with Josie? To which characters does this apply, and why? What is your view of Jordan? Peter was a victim of bullying for twelve years at the hands of certain classmates, many of whom repeatedly tormented him.

But he also shot and killed students he had never met or who had never done anything wrong to him. What empathy, if any, did you have for Peter both before and after the shooting? Josie and Peter were friends until the sixth grade. Is it understandable that Josie decided not to hang out with Peter in favor of the popular crowd? Why or why not? Do you believe, as Picoult suggests, that even the popular kids are afraid that their own friends will turn on them?

Why then does it come as such a surprise to Josie when Matt abuses her verbally and physically? How much did you empathize with Josie? How about Lewis in particular, who taught his son how to handle guns and hunt? How did you feel, when you read that scene? In what ways do the alternating narratives between past and present enhance the story?

How do the scenes in the past give you further insight into the characters and their actions, particularly Peter and Josie? Why does Patrick blame himself for not preventing an incident he had no way of knowing was going to happen? King, an expert witness for the defense, states that Peter was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of chronic victimization.

What reasons does Dr. Do you agree with this? Why does Josie choose to shoot Matt instead of shooting Peter? In the end, has justice been satisfactorily dealt to Peter and to Josie? Discuss the very ending of the novel, which concludes on the one-year anniversary of the Sterling High shooting. Why do you suppose the author chose to leave readers with an image of Patrick and Alex, who is pregnant?

In what way does the final image of the book predict the future? Shootings have occurred at a number of high schools across the country over the last several years. Did Nineteen Minutes make you think about these incidents in a more immediate way than reading about them in the newspaper or seeing coverage on television?

How so? In what ways did the novel impact your opinion of the parties generally involved in school shootings—perpetrators, victims, fellow students, teachers, parents, attorneys, and law enforcement officials? What do you think the author is proposing as the root of the problem of school violence? What have you heard, in the media and in political forums, as solutions? Do you think they will work? What others are saying about Nineteen Minutes. An excerpt from Nineteen Minutes In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game.

View a timeline of worldwide school shootings since Are you an educator looking to use 19 minutes for an anti-bullying curriculum? An academic study on 2, freshman college students found that 43 percent of students indicated they had been bullied in school. Where does the responsibility lie for ending peer cruelty? Questions: What is your role to step in when you see others being treated inappropriately?

Discuss the pervasiveness of homophobic language. What can you do to intervene when others are cruel? Questions: Is popularity more important than anything else…dying of thirst? What is the difference between being popular and belonging to the group? Can everyone be popular? Questions: If somebody strikes someone else…does it matter if they were provoked?

Should anyone care if a student who strikes another was teased and taunted? Do any of you have a responsibility to intervene when peers are hurt emotionally? Questions: Is Josie right? Are alliances different from friends?

Are they more important? What is more important? Or friends? Do popular kids not have friends? Is this important? How do you feel afterward?

Why would Drew have lied about bullying Peter? Questions: Telling a teacher. What are the ramifications? Questions: Talk about any time you have been a witness to the teasing of others. Is it OK to witness, but not participate in hurtful behaviors?

Is there any responsibility for students to step in and attempt to stop peer cruelty? Questions: Talk about what is needed to stand up to peers who hurt others. Questions: School and jail…are there similarities? Questions: Is cruelty fun? Questions: Should teachers intervene when they witness peer cruelty? To what extent? What role should adults in school have to diminish peer cruelty? Questions: Are there areas of your school that are more unsafe than others? What should be done?

How do you feel and think when you hear that there was planning for an attack of this sort? Questions: Do you think parents can help students in school-related social problems? When parents help their children, does it work?

The way that Jodi decided to write this book was beautiful. Since it was a book written about a shooting if it was written from Josie point of view Victim of shooting it would become very bias. Jodi also writes from the past to the present. One chapter of the book may be 5 years before the shooting and then another chapter may be 1 month before the shooting. This is how she gives you background of each character and you are able to learn where they come from and why they behave the way that they do.

Not that killing people was justified but you are able to understand him as a person. I was scared when reading this book that the shooting part would be so sad. But the way she wrote was capturing. There are many questions that are brought up in Nineteen minutes. Such as can someone be pushed too far? Another question that was brought up was could something have been done differently. Could his parents had listened to him when he constantly told them he was bullied.