jodi picoult the storyteller book review

Franz and Reiner are two German brothers different as can be one a serious sensitive student, the other a fighter both end up in the SS.

Eventually she is sent on a transport to Auschwitz and we closely follow the impossible hardships she endures and ultimately survives. Minka grows up in Lodz and is forced into the ghetto with her family. She keeps a scar on her face hidden, is involved in a hopeless romantic affair, and is drawn to Josef, a beloved neighborhood old timer who frequents the bakery. Sage is a brilliant baker who works at night, living a limited lonely life in a small town. The Storyteller has four parallel stories. She recently heard about the Newtown shooting being called a hoax and wonders how “anyone can look those parents in the eye” and say it never happened. Picoult, whose family had distant relatives in concentration camps, is “flabbergasted” by people who can take the facts and have the “chutzpa” to deny Holocaust history. Picoult says tons of philosophical commentary has been written about the profound moral question of whether a survivor can give forgiveness in the place of one who no longer can.

Wiesenthal was a concentration camp inmate when he was sent to the bedside of Karl, a dying Nazi soldier who wanted to be forgiven by a Jew for his horrible deeds. She was later affected strongly by Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower, then re-read it when she started thinking of writing The Storyteller. The only Holocaust book she remembers reading was Elie Wiesel ’s Night during high school. Raised on Long Island, Picoult claims to be agnostic, having had a warm, loving but not particularly Jewish home, though both her parents are Jewish. Having read and reviewed many books about the Holocaust, I would certainly classify this as such, though Picoult says it would be limiting to call it Holocaust fiction. We discussed The Storyteller, her twenty-second book, which she says is about the evils that people can do. fifteen-minute phone interview with Jodi Picoult was a bright morning flash of energy as her enthusiasm shone through the line.

Jodi picoult the storyteller book review