Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (1961)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
    Precision Violin Tuner

    Precision Violin Tuner

    Music and Utilities

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    Spend less time tuning, and more time playing. Precision Violin Tuner utilises your built-in...

    Golfmaster

    Golfmaster

    Sports and Health & Fitness

    1.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    Golfmaster has been designed as a guide to help you improve your level of performance and enjoyment...

    Draw Something

    Draw Something

    Games and Entertainment

    9.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    "Draw Something is the coolest social drawing game around! Draw and Guess everything from doodles to...

40x40

Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Storyteller in Books

May 30, 2017  
The Storyteller
The Storyteller
Jodi Picoult | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
10
8.6 (12 Ratings)
Book Rating
An Ethical Question
Jodi Picoult is the bestselling author of numerous novels, with My Sister’s Keeper being the most well known, perhaps. All of her stories are well written although it is still possible to notice improvements in the writing over the years right up until now with her latest, The Storyteller, which quite possibly could be her best yet.

Arguably, The Storyteller does not quite read as a Jodi Picoult novel is known to. This is, in part, because of the nature of the story. Most of her previous books deal with medical ethics and/or court cases, whereas this story contains neither. The Storyteller contains a combination of past and present - the main focus being on the Holocaust.

Four people narrate the novel: two in the present day and two giving an account of their experience during the Second World War. It begins with Sage Singer, a 25 year old, hermit-like woman with a disfiguring facial scar – the result of a terrible accident, one that also led to the death of her mother. For the past three years Sage has been participating in a grief group – a place where people who have lost loved ones can come together and talk about their feelings. After three years surely Sage would no longer need the help of the group? However she still attends, not because she finds it helpful, but for the opposite reason. She even says herself: “If it were helpful I wouldn’t still be coming.” It unfolds that she still blames herself for her mother’s death despite the reassurances that it was an accident and not her fault.

It is through the grief group that Sage meets an elderly man, Josef Weber. After becoming friendly and discovering that Sage comes from a Jewish family, Josef confesses to something terrible – he was a Nazi during the war. He killed people. He wants Sage to represent all the Jews he killed and forgive him. Then he wants her to help him die.

Whilst, Josef recounts his experience of being part of the Nazi party, another account is also given. Minka, Sage’s grandmother, describes the terrors she faced as an imprisoned Jew suffering fates such as the deaths of all her family and friends and her time in Auschwitz. Another element to the novel is the vampire story Minka wrote as a teenager. This is interspersed between the other chapters of the book. Unwittingly, Minka’s fictional tale reflects the alienation and destruction of the Jews. The final character is Leo who, like Sage, is narrating the present day, and trying to locate ex-Nazi members in order for them to be punished by the government.

One thing to praise Picoult for, not just in The Storyteller, but also in all her novels is the amount of in-depth research she undertakes to make her stories as accurate as possible even though they are fictional. Minka’s account was written is such a way that it was almost believable that Picoult had been there and experienced it herself. She even learnt to bake bread so that she could write from the point of view of a baker. This is pure dedication!

The Storyteller is an amazing, beautiful book, which is not purely an enjoyable read. It informs, shocks and stays with you for a long time. You will question your own morals and ability to forgive. Is anyone entirely evil? Is anyone entirely good? Perhaps we are both, so why should anyone have the right to treat others as inferior from themselves?