The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Rating: 5 out of 5 hearts
460 pages
Released: February 2013
Buy it @ book depository
Sage Singer befriends an
old man who's particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is
everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike
up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage
for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses
his darkest secret - he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard.
Complicating the matter? Sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?
Review
“My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What
must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?
Bread, of course.”
Jodi Picoult has won me over again with the beautifully written tale of sadness, war, love & forgiveness. To begin with I wasn't all that sure about this, but after getting through the first few chapters the tale truly began.
Picoult doesn't stray away from her normal tradition of writing from multiple characters points of view, which in my opinion gives the reader a greater understanding of each characters personalities. The main players are: Sage; the baker, Josef; the elderly ex-nazi, Minka; Sage's Jewish grandmother and Leo; the love interest. Even though Sage is the main character, her grandmother Minka really stole the show with her story. I think I loved this book so much because of Minka, her story was so moving and it felt like it was a true re-telling of someone's life during World war 2.
Something new that I haven't noticed Picoult do before this is write a book mainly from one person's point of view. Probably 50% of the book is Minka's story and weaved through that is a story within her story. I really liked that she did this, it was a really nice change.
I find that Picoult has a great way of telling romance from a male character's point of view. We are lucky enough to get that again in this with Leo, it helps ease some of the more tense parts of the story. Leo is more than just a love interest though but I won't tell you what that is because it may give too much away.
There must've been a great deal of research done to write this because of the amount of detail that is told not only during the World war 2 scenes, but also the process of making bread (as this is Sage's job it's spoken about quite a lot). There was also a pretty big twist which I had kind of guessed but it was still very well done.
If you are a fan of Jodi Picoult or even if you aren't, you MUST read this book! I look forward to see what she writes next.
Something new that I haven't noticed Picoult do before this is write a book mainly from one person's point of view. Probably 50% of the book is Minka's story and weaved through that is a story within her story. I really liked that she did this, it was a really nice change.
I find that Picoult has a great way of telling romance from a male character's point of view. We are lucky enough to get that again in this with Leo, it helps ease some of the more tense parts of the story. Leo is more than just a love interest though but I won't tell you what that is because it may give too much away.
There must've been a great deal of research done to write this because of the amount of detail that is told not only during the World war 2 scenes, but also the process of making bread (as this is Sage's job it's spoken about quite a lot). There was also a pretty big twist which I had kind of guessed but it was still very well done.
If you are a fan of Jodi Picoult or even if you aren't, you MUST read this book! I look forward to see what she writes next.
On the cover
This isn't the normal cover, this is the audiobook cover. I actually like it, the colours and the dress the girl is wearing is really nice. The barbed wire fence is very poignant.
What I'm listening to next: The Knife of never letting go by Patrick Ness
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