Book Club: Nineteen Minutes

[dinahsmum]

We said 31 January to start discussion. Is everybody OK with that - or maybe we have all finished already? I have.

[dandysmom]

I'm finished also.

[angieh]

I am going to say "sorry" and pass on this book. I am afraid I have been seduced by The Pillars of the Earth and haven't read anything else over the last couple of weeks. I'll keep an eye on your discussion though and also what is decided for our next read.

[calismum]

I'm finished. Also if we decide to go with the questions posed at the end of the book I'm quite happy to type them in for everyone.

[dandysmom]

Thanks, CM, that would be nice!

[calismum]

DM what did you think of the examples I pm'd you?

[dandysmom]

Interesting talking points to get us started!

[dinahsmum]

Would it be a good idea to post the first ?3? now, so we can start to think about them before Sunday?

[dandysmom]

Yes, good idea!

[calismum]

No probs - will do that in a minute.

[calismum]

OK - the first three questions are:-
1) Alex and Lacey's friendship comes to an end when they discover Peter and Josie playing with guns in the Houghton house. Why does Alex decide it is in Josie's best interest to keep her daughter away from Peter? What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter?

2) Alex often has trouble separating her role as a mother and a judge. How does this affect her relationship with Josie. Discuss whether or not Alex's job is more important to her than being a mother.

3) A theme throughout the novel is the idea of masks and personas, and pretending to be someone you're not. To which characters does this apply and why?

There are 16 questions all together. We need to decide if we will look at them all or select a random like ever 4th one after this or what??

[dinahsmum]

1) Alex and Lacey's friendship comes to an end when they discover Peter and Josie playing with guns in the Houghton house. Why does Alex decide it is in Josie's best interest to keep her daughter away from Peter? What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter?

These sounds rather more like exam questions than book club questions, now I come to look at them more closely.:)

Alex suffers from a bit of tunnel vision in many aspects of her life and just thinks of the danger her precious possession, errr, daughter might be in, forgetting about things like friendship.

Significance? I don't understand what the question is getting at.

2) Alex often has trouble separating her role as a mother and a judge. How does this affect her relationship with Josie. Discuss whether or not Alex's job is more important to her than being a mother.
Alex seems to be more of a career woman than mother-figure. Josie is left to her own devices a good deal, and makes her own life which doesn't involve her mother very much

3) A theme throughout the novel is the idea of masks and personas, and pretending to be someone you're not. To which characters does this apply and why?
I'm not sure I agree with the premise of the question. Each of us has different faces/aspects which we use in different situations and I'm not sure the characters in the book exhibit this any more than 'real life'.

Overall
I quite enjoyed the book, as a read, but didn't think it was either great literature or a parable for our times or a reflection of the real world etc etc.
I thought the beginning, where the massacre was taking place, was very well done, considering the subject matter. It zipped along, kept the reader gripped without nauseating.
The author is fairly prolific and I thought this came across in the personae. As characters were introduced, I felt I was able to slot them into the plot, like pieces in a jigsaw - particularly so with the detective - "Aha, the love interest - the one to turn Alex's head":roll:
Also, in this regard, Peter's father's hunting. It was essential for the story that Peter could be a marksman, so the only logical way for him to get the skill would be with his Dad. But his Dad doesn't feel like a natural hunter to me - it was just a plot device.
I felt so sorry for Peter, so I guess his character was written sympathetically.
The picture of US teens and schools was rather bleak. I've read things with the Jocks/in crowd v everyone else before and find it quite scarey. As if growing up isn't hard enough.

19 Minutes has the same basic plot as We Have to Talk About Kevin. I didn't read that but heard it in 10 parts on the radio, so it's difficult to compare the writing. I preferred 'Kevin' though; it seemed to have a little more depth and not to have been written as the next in a series of airport books.

I don't want to damn the book with faint praise. I have a perverse tendency to avoid 'The next great blockbuster from ..' but now that I have found, and enjoyed, Jodi Picoult, I'll pick up and read any of her books I find abandoned in holiday accommodation. I don't think I'll purchase any more.

[calismum]

1) Alex and Lacey's friendship comes to an end when they discover Peter and Josie playing with guns in the Houghton house. Why does Alex decide it is in Josie's best interest to keep her daughter away from Peter? What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter?

TThe first thing I thought when Alex banned the friendship was that it was not entirely for Josies benefit. I think, throughout the book there is a selfishness to Alex and I think she is very career motivated I think she thought this was in her best interest, not Josie's, and what about her friendship with Lacey, did that not matter to her at all. I would have thought in 'real life' there would have been more protests/upset/discussion between all 4 involved people but it just seems that life carried on. Given the issues that Peter already had it just felt so unfair. I though - they're only kids, hide the keys in a better place and let them get on with it.

2) Alex often has trouble separating her role as a mother and a judge. How does this affect her relationship with Josie. Discuss whether or not Alex's job is more important to her than being a mother.

As Alex obviously did not plan to be a mother and had an extremely organised life, I think her precious chils was expected to fit in to that. We've all seen these efficient career driven people but at what cost to people they are involved with?

3) A theme throughout the novel is the idea of masks and personas, and pretending to be someone you're not. To which characters does this apply and why?

Agree with DM here that we all tend to wear a mask for certain situations. The thing here was I'm not sure that the mask Alex wore was at work, it was at home. She had no idea how to relate to her child at any time in her life and had an almost naive view of life.

Of the three books we've read this was a good read and did keep me reading. The first two I would have given up on had it not been they were book club ones. I thought there was a shallowness to all the characters inasmuch they fulfilled their role in the story but I did not get a feeling of the real person. Having said that there are very few books that do that well.

I thought it was a brave subject to cover, and I thought the emotion and fear was well captured.

I too felt so sorry for Peter and I just wanted to knock his parents heads together. When he was told he would be punished I almost wept for him. What was his mother thinking????

I'd not avoid her books in the future but I'm not rushing out to buy another just yet.

[dandysmom]

It was a good page turning read, and a very good description of the turmoil that a distressing tragedy like this causes. Not literature, no, but tackling an all to common happening here.

Agree completely that Alex was a far better attorney than mother. I can understand why she didn't want her daughter going to a house were guns were available, but the sensible thing to have done would have been to let the friendship with Peter continue with the proviso that she was never to go to his house. Poor Peter, could not help but feel sorry for him even after what he's done.

I never assumed the jury would buy the PTS theory. And why in the world didn't the attorney insist on a change of venue for the trial? A plot device, as DM said.

I think the high school scenes...the cliques, etc. are unfortunately so true to life; even in my small all girl high school we had the jocks, the popular crowd, the brains.....and the misfits. Probably worse now.

I probably won't buy another, but will check the library; makes a good evening's read.

Have we decided on the next book?

[dinahsmum]

Will you put up some more questions CM?

Next book? - you choose DM?

[dandysmom]

I was the one who suggested Nineteen Minutes, I believe; so someone else should get a turn ........

[dinahsmum]

CM maybe??

[calismum]

Do we want some more questions - if so another two or three?

[dandysmom]

Why not? .......

[calismum]

ok - here goes.

q5 - Peter was a victim of bullying for 12 yrs at the hands of certain class mates, many of whom repeatedly tormented him. But he also shot and killed students he he had never met or who had never done anything wrong to him. What empathy if any, did you feel for him both before and after the shooting.

q7 - Josie admits she often witnessed Matt's cruelty toward other students. Why then does it come as such a surprise to Josie when Matt abuses her verbally and physically? How much did you empathise with Josie?

q10 - In what way do the alternating narratives between past an present enhance the story? How do the scenes in the past give you further insight into the characters and their actions, particularly Peter and JOsie.

[dinahsmum]

q5 - Peter was a victim of bullying for 12 yrs at the hands of certain class mates, many of whom repeatedly tormented him. But he also shot and killed students he he had never met or who had never done anything wrong to him. What empathy if any, did you feel for him both before and after the shooting.

I felt very sorry for Peter at all times. I feel the character was written to provoke sympathy and empathy - we've all been in situations where we weren't part of the 'in crowd', where we felt uncomfortable, if not the direct victims of bullying. I was sorry for Peter from when his lovely lunch box went out of the school bus window, to the dreadful e-mail debacle, to the pantsing (can you imagine anything worse?) to being on remand and knowing that it was likely he would live out his life in jail.

q7 - Josie admits she often witnessed Matt's cruelty toward other students. Why then does it come as such a surprise to Josie when Matt abuses her verbally and physically? How much did you empathise with Josie?


Not a lot. She's a bit of an academic airhead isn't she, though a rather undeveloped character or undeveloped person.

q10 - In what way do the alternating narratives between past an present enhance the story? How do the scenes in the past give you further insight into the characters and their actions, particularly Peter and JOsie.

The various time slots were fine - hardly an innovation in novel writing. It simply fleshed out the characters, as any novel must as it develops

[dandysmom]

The way Peter was presented, you couldn't help but sympathize with him; the eternal outsider; school was Hell for him'

Josie was in love with Matt; the "love is blind" cliche applies here. She shouldn't have been surprised at him turning on her the way he did; but I can understand her reaction. I'm sure many of us have, in hindsight after the breakup of a relationship, seen things that we ignored or glossed over during it.

As DM said, the flashbacks just fleshed out the characters.