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‘Nineteen Minutes’ by Jodi Picoult

This is definitely a book about mothers and Jodi Picoult is definitely a writer who appeals to mothers: there are now more than one million copies of her books in print across Australia and New Zealand.

So, in some ways, it is the perfect Mother’s Day read. Be warned though, it’s about what happens when mothers do all they humanly can to protect and guide their children, only to have them go catastrophically off the rails anyway. In other words, it’s not exactly happy-happy-joy-joy so if that’s what you’re after, keep this one for later.

It’s a normal day at Sterling High in New Hampshire until Peter Houghton opens fire on his fellow students. Peter comes from a nice family – not perfect, but nice – so what ever could have driven him to mass murder?

Jodi has a real gift for taking a “what if” and turning it into a page-turner. She has already done it with mercy killing and organ harvesting, and now she’s got the reader thinking, “What if Peter was my son? or what if your daughter was one of the survivors and you the judge in Peter’s trial? or if your husband was the lawyer defending Peter?”

And the biggest “what if” of them all, is, “What if your kids don’t fit in?” The world can be a cruel place if you are at all different and nowhere is this felt more keenly than at high school. Some kids will do anything to fit in and some will do awful things if they don’t: Nineteen oinutes spells this out clearly.

Another best-selling book on a similar subject called We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, which my book club read last year. It was a popular choice among the mothers in the group but I didn’t connect with the main character and never finished it. Jodi’s book, on the other hand, I could not put down.

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