The Storyteller
The Storyteller
By: Jodi Picoult
Published: 2013
# of pages: 460
Official description: Sage Singer befriends an old man who's particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses his darkest secret - he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it murder, or justice?
My opinion: Someone asked me what I thought about this book and I said "I love it! I mean, I don't love it. It's hard to read." And that sums it up for me. The novel is so well written and I couldn't wait to see what happened next. However, it's a Holocaust book so it is very hard to read. There were a couple of times where I thought I'd just put the book down and not pick it up again. It's honest, people. Picoult doesn't sugar coat what the Jews who suffered during the Holocaust went through.
I really liked the character of Sage. Her scars made her a unique character and I loved how naturally she grew over the course of the book. I guessed what happened with Josef, but that didn't ruin anything for me.
Overall, I recommend this to adults who enjoy historical fiction, WWII fiction, and who are looking for a serious, well written book to read.
Why I gave this book 4/5 stars: Well written, great characters, hard read, brutal descriptions.
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