Nineteen Minutes

I am currently reading a novel by Jodi Picoult entitled Nineteen Minutes.  I have read at least three other novels she has written. She tends to write about very difficult subject matter.  Perhaps her best known is My Sister's Keeper.  The friend who loaned Nineteen Minutes to me did so with a warning, saying:  It helps if you don't have any teenagers.   With a daughter in her twenties, I'm not so far removed from the high school days that I am unaware of its cruelties.  I remember her trials and tribulations and was relieved when she made it safely to her college years.  There, at least, there are more options for friends than in a small town.

This novel is about a fictional school massacre, based on Columbine High School.  It is a very disturbing book.  It is not just the massacre that is disturbing,  but human nature in general as it is portrayed.  The boy who had been brutally bullied all his life had done the shooting, and of course ended up in jail.  The first time someone was brought to share his cell, someone he described as a 'special needs' kid,  the shooter grabbed that boy's glasses and crushed them,  just the way others had with him again and again.  Somehow,  I suppose, I had hoped that knowing how humiliating that was would have kept him from that behavior.  But sadly human nature does not often work that way.  The more degraded a person is,  the more likely that person is to inflict the same kind of pain on others.

I am about two thirds through the book, and cannot imagine how it could have a good or even satisfactory ending.  Reading it makes even me wonder how justice could be rendered in this case. The cruelties and shame inflicted on the poor unpopular kid should not go unpunished,  but that was what had always happened,  because to turn in the offenders only makes it worse for the one who is bullied.   None of this is to suggest that the perpetrators who were shot deserved to die.  Of course, they did not.

What is missing for me so far is grace.  So far there has not been any.  None for the shooter or his parents.  None for the student tormentors who lived.      That is what would make for a satisfactory ending to this book.  A bit of grace would go a long way.   It might come in the form of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, mercy.

I have read books before that ended without the slightest hint of grace, and hated them.   I have higher hopes for this book,  as I believe the writer does not have a completely dark and grim view of human nature.   I guess I'll find out soon enough.