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The Storyteller Jodi Picoult Books

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The Storyteller Jodi Picoult Books

After a day of digesting this novel I changed my rating from ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars to ⭐️⭐️⭐️ because the more I thought about it the more I had problems with this book. It was certainly different than most of her other books in that it didn’t involve a legal drama and/or courtroom outcome, and that was refreshing. But as I said I had some problems with the way the plot unfolded.

The themes of the book are redemption and forgiveness. Sage is the main character who works nights as a bread baker - nights, because she has a disfiguring scar on her face and prefers to be seen by as few people as possible due to embarrassment about the way she looks. But this doesn’t stop her from having an affair with a good looking married man. <Insert 🙄> She is asked by Josef - a 95-year-old former SS officer who worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp - to essentially help him end his life, aka: killing him. He wants her to kill him because he doesn’t feel like he deserves to live after the atrocities he committed while working in the camp “just following orders.” (Boo hoo - I never felt an iota of sympathy for him.) So the first question that sprung to mind was why didn’t he just kill himself? Why choose her? (That question was finally answered but without spoilers I can’t go into detail.) The story is told through four different first person perspectives: Sage, Josef, Leo (a federal agent who helps hunt down and prosecute on-the-lamb SS officers) and Minka (Sage’s grandmother who survived the camps.)

I did not remotely enjoy the story-within-a-story (hence the title “The Storyteller”) that Minka wrote while in the camps. These vignettes were interwoven throughout the book and while they paralleled the overall theme I thought they were superfluous and very boring. There was a big twist that unfortunately came as absolutely no surprise to me which was disappointing. What became of the relationship between Leo and Sage seemed incredibly unrealistic - another disappointment.

What it boils down to is that I enjoyed all four characters’ stories individually, just not as a whole. If she wrote four separate books about each of their stories that would have been preferable. There were several things I found completely unbelievable, but their individual storylines were well written, engaging and made me want to keep reading with the hope that the ending would tie everything together in a nice big bow. But sadly, for me, it just didn’t work out.


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The Storyteller Jodi Picoult Books Reviews

The Storyteller is an especially powerful story of the Holocaust, its victims and its perpetrators. What makes this story so disturbing is in the way that ordinary people become victims, monsters, and survivors. Piccoult gets into the psychology of what makes people do the things that they do, and explores the concept of atonement and forgiveness as well. The device of weaving several characters' stories together by chapter and then also having an allegory woven in, helps the reader stay engaged. The story switches just about the time that you think you can't take any more of the character's pain or evil behavior. The monsters are amongst us, disguised as neighbors, friends, relatives. Only when the proper catalyst is applied do they become visible---and then, it's often too late.

Josef is an elderly man befriends Sage (young, secular Jew with a scar from an accident, baker) and eventually asks her to help him die. As the story unfolds, we meet her grandmother Minka, who is a Holocaust survivor and Leo, the DOJ agent charged with finding Nazis hiding in the US. Sage finds herself embroiled in a moral dilemma regarding Josef. The stories he tells are horrific and brutal, and he deserves to die for what he did. But, for 50+ years, he'd been a pillar of the community, a beloved teacher and community member. Sage has difficulty reconciling the two Josefs. Meanwhile, her grandmother finally reveals to Sage and Leo her full story, which includes her interactions with Josef at Auschwitz when she was a prisoner and he was a Nazi officer.

In the story, no one is wholly good or wholly evil--it is the daily decisions that they made that led them on a particular path. Self-perception also comes into play because one's sense of self influences decisions that one makes and how actions taken by others are perceived. Perception of events also influences future outcomes; for example, is it wrong to behave brutally toward someone if doing so will save her life? And, ultimately, these moral choices are what make the story so disturbing--you can't help but wonder what you would do in the same situation.

When talking of forgiveness, too, there is the Jewish concept that only the person wronged can forgive the perpetrator, so murder is unforgivable because the dead can't grant forgiveness.
This was well-written enough, but an utter slog to get through (I found myself speed-reading through Minka's italicized story within the story, within the story; it was too disjointly rendered). Mainly, I waited patiently to "get" Sage, including what was behind the facial scar issue -- all of her hiding. But I couldn't; she never came alive for me. [Mild spoiler alert coming up....] And then the surprise ending, the unilateral decision she made behind Leo's back, had me disliking her immensely. I get the symbolism of her action, but it wasn't necessary; the entire story itself made the "we're all capable of good and evil" point just fine. So, what did such a disappointing ending leave the readers with? The assumption that she went on to live out a grand lie for the rest of her life -- with Leo, particularly in light of what he does for a living? Minka's Holocaust story was most compelling; otherwise, just ... no, including all the loose ends. This was the first of this author's books I've read. Not sure I'll read another.
I've read a number of books about the Holocaust, so the historical events and many of the details were familiar. I also guessed the final plot twist a third of the way through the book. None of that mattered. The characters and their world were alive, and it was impossible not to care about them, even the worst of them.
After a day of digesting this novel I changed my rating from ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars to ⭐️⭐️⭐️ because the more I thought about it the more I had problems with this book. It was certainly different than most of her other books in that it didn’t involve a legal drama and/or courtroom outcome, and that was refreshing. But as I said I had some problems with the way the plot unfolded.

The themes of the book are redemption and forgiveness. Sage is the main character who works nights as a bread baker - nights, because she has a disfiguring scar on her face and prefers to be seen by as few people as possible due to embarrassment about the way she looks. But this doesn’t stop her from having an affair with a good looking married man. <Insert 🙄> She is asked by Josef - a 95-year-old former SS officer who worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp - to essentially help him end his life, aka killing him. He wants her to kill him because he doesn’t feel like he deserves to live after the atrocities he committed while working in the camp “just following orders.” (Boo hoo - I never felt an iota of sympathy for him.) So the first question that sprung to mind was why didn’t he just kill himself? Why choose her? (That question was finally answered but without spoilers I can’t go into detail.) The story is told through four different first person perspectives Sage, Josef, Leo (a federal agent who helps hunt down and prosecute on-the-lamb SS officers) and Minka (Sage’s grandmother who survived the camps.)

I did not remotely enjoy the story-within-a-story (hence the title “The Storyteller”) that Minka wrote while in the camps. These vignettes were interwoven throughout the book and while they paralleled the overall theme I thought they were superfluous and very boring. There was a big twist that unfortunately came as absolutely no surprise to me which was disappointing. What became of the relationship between Leo and Sage seemed incredibly unrealistic - another disappointment.

What it boils down to is that I enjoyed all four characters’ stories individually, just not as a whole. If she wrote four separate books about each of their stories that would have been preferable. There were several things I found completely unbelievable, but their individual storylines were well written, engaging and made me want to keep reading with the hope that the ending would tie everything together in a nice big bow. But sadly, for me, it just didn’t work out.