What I’m Reading: The Storyteller

Our daughter Kayla recently recommended a book to me,The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult.  I’ve was a huge Jodi Picoult fan for a long time then she started adding an element of super natural and she lost me as a devoted reader.  Kayla assured me that she had read this book and indeed, she thought I would like it.

I took a risk and gave it a try.

So did I like it?Yes.  I did.  There is a “story” that’s written into the story that is a bit fanciful but all in all, it’s good and I’d recommend it.

The book deals with WWII, war crimes, Holocaust victims, forgiveness and justice.  In typical Jodi Picoult fashion, I thought I had my mind made up as to what I thought should happen to the former SS Officer but then saw things through his perspective and didn’t quite know how I felt.  It was hard to know what was right and what should be done.  Typically the author has a bit of a twist towards the end of her stories and this one I guessed about 3/4 of the way through the book.  That was okay.  I wanted to keep reading and see if I have guessed right.

Here’s what Amazon had to say, “Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.”

All in all I liked the book.  Amazon readers gave it 4.6 stars…I’ll agree.  I’m actually beginning to be hopeful.  In the past while I’ve come back to this author and am starting to like her again….I’ve loved her early books, in fact, they are some of my favorites.  Then I didn’t like the middle books and now, I’m liking her again.