Top 10 list for "Nineteen Minutes" By: Jodi Picoult

1. The plot of this book is about a boy named Peter Houghton who has been bulllied and pushed around his whole life. One decision that Peter makes causes the town of sterling New hampshire to be changed forever more. This story leads through the shooting, the causes and affects of it, the lives effected, everyone around and where the case leads to.
2. Peter Houghton has been best friends with Josie Cormier for most of his yournger years mainly because their mothers. When Josie starts to change in middle school for the "cooler" and more "popular" Peter is left lonesome to fend on his own. Even worse than the fact that Josie has left him, is the new realization that peter is soon treated like scum on the ground that all the in corwd steps on. When Josie, and captain of the football team Matt Royston start to date, Matt takes the bullying to another level leaving peter alone and scared.
3. Josie and Peters parents play a major role in the aftermath of the shooting. Josies mother whom is a judge, has to battle her daughter in her distraughtness of the death of her boyfriend, and when Josie will not speak about what happend when Peter supposidly killed Matt, Alex is left with being the judge of the case and being a mother for her daughter when she needs her the most. The story also goes into the lives of Peter's parents who blame themselves for what happened with Peter. As they try to fit the pieces together in where they went wrong, they start to deal with that it was not what they did and that it may not be their faults.
4. The teenage students of the highschool play role in nineteen minutes. all of the people that were affected by the shooting whether they knew someone that was killed, hurt or there when it all happened. Each student must be questioned on exactly what they saw having to relive the hell that they were put into. The book has a complex way of making the reader root for peter although he is the killer.
5. The setting of nineteen minutes is in Sterling, New hampshire. The book goes into the homes of the students, the people involved in the court case, the school, Josie, Matt and of course Peter. The authour, Jodi Picoult has an interesting way of going into the different perspectives of the lives of everyone involved. The story leads to cry for peter but curse at him all in the same page.
6. The book starts with the shooting, Peter killing the lives of so many innocent people. It then goes back in time and gives in full detail how Peter was bullied for his whole life and the only way of getting out of it is stopping those dead in their tracks. Peter takes this act of violence but it changes some more than others. This is a twisted and surreal book about the aftermath aof a highschool massacre and takes you where no other book or movie has gone before. The book leads you deeply into the lives of all of those affected and throughot the book i found myself full of anger rage and tears. For me i wanted what peter did to be a lifechanging expirece for everyone around, but of course there will always be the ones that will still pick of the less popular and uncool kids.
7. I think that the most significant thing that happens in this book is when Josie admits that she shot her own boyfriend. This leads to her case and her imprisonment when all along the book was leaning towards that she was completely innocent. It is interesting that the two charecters in this book that did not get along, actually were the same person. Peter found himself stuck in t deep hole of sorrow, and josie felt herself in a trapped relationship with no way out.
8. Helplessness in the reoccoring theme of this book. As the charecters try to protect all those around them, they realize that they all need more help than they were giving. It is very interesting to me that the authour would make the turn for the bad guy to seem good, and the good guy to turn out being bad.
9. Peter faces the largest internal conflict throughout the book. I think that Peter grown sufficiently from the beginning to the end of the book. It seems as though peter will live a life in the hell that he created for himself but at the end of the book peter ends up taking his own life. He knows that he cannot take back what he did but he takes his own life to escape from the world that he never wanted to live in in the first place.
10. Although the ending of the book is very sad i think that it was a happy one. The two main charecters found an escape and although what happend was terrible and trechorous, they need all the help that they can get. It was a positive ending because for Peter, his time in jail he became stringer both physiclly and mentally as to where his imprisonment left him. Josie was trapped in a relationship filled with anger and rage. She found her way out and now has to serve her time for what she has done. But in the end i cannot imagine anything that would have made any more sense.