“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five....In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.” The threat is more often than not always from the inside…not the outside, but so many believe otherwise. We’ve all at some point in time been the butt of someone else’s joke, and maybe we’ve even been hurt emotionally or physically by someone else in school while growing up. Children are sent to these places these schools to be educated to be taught how to survive in the real world, but what parents forget is that the real world is a cruel place not everyone gets along there is always someone better at something than you and there are always clicks and exclusions, but unlike the real world school is a place where you cannot get away and simply avoid someone it is a place where you may have to face your tormenter day after day for years. Perhaps even some of us have ourselves been the bully. I admit and not with pride either readers that as a small child before I even made it to school I bullied this one girl because she was so much bigger than me and I wanted to fit in with the kids better in my neighborhood… that poor girl finally left our area, but thankfully I would see her years later and get to say “I’m sorry.” I’m only glad this was before we started school so she had the chance to go on and do her own thing without my bratty antics to hinder her. It almost seemed like justice later on when I was beaten bloody by some boys on the playground. Those boys themselves would later on be bullied by other individuals one of them even was expelled from school later on for getting involved in a fight where a kid he was teasing lashed back at him… you see it as a kid in school the teasing, taunting, the clicks, the betrayals from people you trusted, or thought you could trust. Now, imagine if you will if you were bullied everyday of your life from the first day of school right up until High School perhaps some days were better, and by better no one noticed you in order to pick on you. What would that do to you? Maybe you would have one or two friends, but mostly you would just be an outcast, but that’s just typical school stuff right? Just kids being kids, the teachers and your parents might try to help, but perhaps they figure well that’s just how it is, toughen up and it will get better. School isn’t forever. But, what happens when it doesn’t get better? How do you look at the past 9 years and see 2 more years just like it, and perhaps it will just continue? What then? In Sterling a small town in NH where nothing really happens, at least that is until this town is shattered by a shocking act of violence. Afterwards the town residents must not only seek justice in order to begin the healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever.” I actually disagree completely readers, I think Jodi Picoult was trying to go for this, but most of the time the events that have you realizing this wasn’t just a monster acting out are not given to the public only to us the readers who get to see everything. I was very disappointed with how little the community actually was involved with the aftermath of this tragic event. There was what was expected but I didn’t see a lot of what I haven’t read in the papers or seen on the news, there wasn’t a lot of depth the public involved saw that I felt like spectators don’t see. The other description of this book too also led me a bit falsely I think “Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.” Perhaps a little of this happens readers, but again it’s mostly with those who are involved, I understand our justice system is supposed to be blind and impartial and fact based, but it felt like there weren’t enough facts presented and the characters were all clearly doing what they could for themselves, and it also seemed like a lot wasn’t learned… I’m not siding with the main character who I will let remain nameless and faceless in this review, but there is an understanding that something anything may have been done in order to prevent such a heinous last resort acted out in violence, but instead of focusing on how to prevent this or why this happened this book seems to focus more on a mother and daughter’s relationship… very interesting, but there was a lot that could have happened, it was a good book and made you think as Picoult’s do, but unlike other of her books I’ve listened to this one felt a little flat and unwilling to really create a real controversy, but instead make it something that we too just have to live with, but in that readers I see the brilliancy, because when an event that occurs like the one in this book we as a community, state, nation, do have to just deal with it, and how we deal with it is up to us, because as we’ve learned over the years it might happen again, so maybe instead of walling in ourselves in more and looking to type cast a victim (which readers Picoult did a great job in type casting the victim and villains it was so cliché) as a villain we should be trying to prevent these acts by simply doing something that never occurs in this tale.. compassion, understanding, an outreach program, because a cement wall, an access card, a plague in remembrance can only fix so much and these usually happen after. I’m not saying go looking for these kids and type cast them no, because even a popular kid could be just as much as a monster a perfect child with great grades, wonderful in sports, good looking, can be just as isolated and confused, but how can we change this behavior? I don’t know readers, again Picoult presents us with a question, and again there’s really no one answer, and again we have to decide for ourselves, what would we do, and what can we do? The reader was one this time rather than a cast of people I’ve become accustomed to with Picoult books a Carol Monda, and she did wonderful so I do tip my hat to her as she set a very good pace, tone, and knew how to add to such a tragic tale. A very raw book indeed readers, I definetely enjoyed the controversy of it.
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