"Suddenly Peter felt his stomach turn to ice. What if kindergarten was not as great as he’d imagined? What if his teacher looked like the witch on that TV program that gave him nightmares sometimes? What if he forgot which direction the letter E went and everyone made fun of him? With hesitation, he climbed the steps of the school bus. The driver wore an army jacket and had two teeth missing in the front. “There’s seats in back,” he said, and Peter headed down the aisle"
Jodi Picoult is a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist who I have been meaning to read for some time. She has published 28 novels that have been translated into 34 languages. Her books often touch upon hot button, ripped from the headlines issues. And in 2007 she published Nineteen Minutes a novel centering around a mass shooting at a high school. It's a subject that tragically hasn't aged in the fifteen years since the novel was published. If anything it's gotten worse.
The shooter at the center of Nineteen Minutes is seventeen year old Peter Houghton who walks into Sterling High one morning and opens fire on his classmates. Ten students are killed including a teacher. Nineteen Minutes deals with the aftermath of the shooting but also the years that led up to why Peter snapped and did this terrible thing. There is no excuse for what Peter did but we are shown over the course of the novel how serious an issue school bullying is. How it can change a person and it certainly changed Peter who was physically and verbally assaulted by the school bullies starting in kindergarten.
At first Peter has an ally in his friend Josie Cormier. She protects Peter from the kids who pick on him daily but as they go through grammar and high school together Josie begins to drift away from Peter joining the popular crowd. She feels bad about this since she likes Peter but it becomes clear that to remain friends with him will end up making her an outcast as well. So Peter becomes increasingly isolated and actually if the jocks and the bullies left Peter alone he could live with that. But these kids are sadistic and cruel. They will not leave him alone and it eventually ends in disaster.
Nineteen Minutes focuses on school bullying mainly but other issues are discussed too, the easy availability of guns, violent video games, mental illness. And one thing that really struck me in this novel is how hard it is to be a parent. Your heart breaks for Peter's mother Lacy. She is a good woman and she loves her two sons but she makes a mistake early in the book when she goes to see Peter's teacher. Peter is about seven and the teacher tells Lacy that the other kids are picking on him. Lacy is horrified and expects the school to put the bullying to an immediate stop.
But the clueless teacher tells Lacy that this kind of thing happens in schools and therefore the best thing for Peter would be learning how to stand up for himself. Lacy in her heart is bothered by this advise and yet she is intimidated into thinking maybe the teacher knows best. A big mistake since the bullying doesn't stop and going forward Peter begins to withdraw further and further and never shares with his parents again about how things are really going in school.
Nineteen Minutes is not a beach read but it is wonderfully written, thought-provoking and heart-breaking. And one lesson the author drives home is that from the moment a child leaves for kindergarten and on through high school, parents have to stay involved and ask questions. Teachers have to be on the lookout as well because kids that are bullied often don't say anything.
Well done, Kathy, as usual. The very idea, as the kindergarten teacher suggested, that Peter should learn to “ stand up for himself”, that teachers, parents, and other adults in a child’s life have no responsibility to stop soul destroying bullying is central to why we are in this mess. There are lots of little horrors that occur long before it culminates in a mass shooting. Teaching kindness by example would go a long way and should be an integral part of school curriculum and child rearing, not expecting children and adults to toughen up. That just makes thugs out of the victim as well as the perpetrators. Jodi Picoult deals with the hard issues and is, I agree, an excellent writer.
ReplyDeleteHi, Iris, Thanks so much for posting. Jodi Picoult really is an excellent writer and her latest book is about the covid pandemic which I will be interested in reading. Her novels center around important issues but she doesn't disregard plot and characterization. Things are not black and white in her novels and that's true about life as well. Decades from now people will be reading Jodi to find out what it was like to live in these times.
DeleteThis does sound like a powerful read, I'm just not sure I could read it right now.
ReplyDeleteHI Lark, I completely agree. The books we choose at any given moment are attached to our moods and sometimes we need something lighter. I find mystery novels entertaining and comforting even though they deal with a murder and yet they by the end of the book the case is solved and justice has prevailed. What makes Nineteen Minutes so powerful and disturbing is that it's all too relevant right now with no end in sight.
DeleteI read this one several years ago, Kathy, and every time another school shooting happens I think of it. This is one of those novels that should be read widely...by parents, students, teachers, and school administrators everywhere. Bullying is a horrible thing and it sometimes creates time bombs that don't explode until many years later. It is not usually the actual bullies who pay the price; it is everyone caught up in the explosion as well as the shooter whose life has been miserable for so many years. We need to do a better jobe with or kids.
ReplyDeleteHi Sam, i am certainly going to remember this book too going forward. And another thing the book points out is that when it comes to school bullying the bullies are usually one or two kids tops. But they have an entourage who without the head bully would probably have left Peter alone. And then too the bully relies on the rest of the class being bystanders. Agree, this is a book that parents and teachers must read.
DeleteI have not read Picoult either. She's not high on my list to read but I am curious about her latest one set during the pandemic, which sounds interesting. I'm glad you liked this one.
ReplyDeleteThe pandemic novel sounds interesting to me too. I would imagine we will see more novels about covid in years to come.
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