“The Storyteller” by Jodi Picoult – A Question of Morality

In The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, we are introduced to Sage Singer. She runs her own bakery, spending her nights preparing the goods for the morning, hoping to escape the gaping emptiness that her life has become. 

Her head filled with memories of a past she’d rather forget, an acceptance of the reality that she is a lonely soul, and as if that wasn’t enough, she also has the passing of mother weighing down on her shoulders. One day though, she makes the acquaintance of an old man at her grief support group.

The man starts to stop by the bakery, and they develop a friendship, however unlikely it may be considering all of their differences. As they become more comfortable with each other, the old man, Josef, reveals to her a dark secret he hasn’t told anyone else before… and requests her help (I won’t say what exactly for fear of spoiling the story for you). 

If she is to accept, she may not only have to face certain legal consequences, but also some moral ones, leaving her at loss as to her own identity. She then starts to question the system of judgment and morality she has been using her entire life, trying to decide where to draw the line between justice and sadism?

Sage Singer makes for a very compelling main character, but I believe that Josef is the one who brought the best out of her. It’s through the interactions that she has with him that the story develops, that she starts to change and question her past as well as her future.

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (Book cover)
As a matter of fact, to me, the conversations between the two characters were some of the most notable parts of The Storyteller. This is one of those novels that is to be classified as more of a character study than anything else, using Sage as a vehicle for trying to find the answer to various moral questions. 

What’s more, I found it fascinating how Sage’s world changed so drastically and quickly upon making the discoveries she did, and yet she doesn’t really see things in black and white, but rather, she is simply a soul trying to find her way through this world and to see the truth about her life. A rather slow novel, but it’s one I’d recommend for the introspective mind.

Jodi Picoult (Author)

Jodi Picoult


Personal site

Jodi Picoult is an American author who has had the honor of being awarded the 2003 New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. Her books have garnered popularity on an international level, with there being more than 14 million copies of her books in print, and counting. Some of her more famous novels (amongst the many she has written, of course) include The Pact and Salem Falls.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

“The Locked Door” by Freida McFadden – Roots of a Lost Innocence

Image
  Freida McFadden has been quietly writing some exciting and original thrillers in her spare time from being a practicing physician, and The Locked Door is one of her latest offering in the genre.  It tells the story of Nora, a surgeon and daughter of a serial killer now in jail, who sees her life assaulted from the dark as someone begins to recreate her father's work with the exact same signature.
Read more

“The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle – A New Home Among the Stars

Image
A.G. Riddle's Long Winter Trilogy Series is one many of us will remember for the amazing story it brings of humanity's last stand against an overwhelming enemy in times of hopelessness. In The Lost Colony , the third book in the series, we follow James and Emma on their own respective struggles as humanity tries to settle itself on a new planet with an unseen danger none could have foreseen.
Read more

“Winter World” by A.G. Riddle – Ice Age from the Void

Image
A.G. Riddle is a true literary explorer seeking to push humanity to its limits and beyond, setting them on a desperate collision course with something beyond its understanding in Winter World . With a sudden ice age dawning on humanity entire swathes of land become uninhabitable and people begin dropping like flies, with anarchy reigning supreme. Looking to the stars for a miraculous solution, the remnants of humanity find a massive mysterious object floating near Mars ...whatever it is, our civilization's hopes of survival rest entirely in its hands.
Read more

“The Girl on the Stairs” by Barry Ernest – The Small Thorn you Can’t Ignore

Image
Girl on the Stairs , by Barry Ernest and with a foreword written by David Lifton, is an exploration of one specific aspect of the JFK assassination. More precisely, it looks into what a little girl by the name of Victoria Adams saw on that day while standing in the staircase of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly making his escape.  Actually, it is more about what she didn’t see than what she did see. Victoria was on the staircase Oswald supposedly used, at the exact same time he supposedly used it. If he were to be there, even the little girl she was, Victoria would have noticed a nervous man quickly running down the stairs. However, she says that on that day, she was alone there, with nobody to be found, especially Oswald.
Read more

“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Other Side of the Barricade

Image
The two World Wars have been documented, discussed and depicted from virtually every perspective imaginable, ranging from small children caught in a crossfire all the way the leaders of each country. However, it seems that here is a startlingly small amount of attention dedicated to the small hiatus period between the two wars, a time during which many changes came to pass in Germany in a very short amount of time.
Read more