Author: Jodi Picoult
First Published: February 2013
Publisher: Emily Bestler Books/Atria
460 pages (hardcover)
Another Jodi Picoult book for me, this time it’s The Storyteller. The dust jacket summary of the novel didn’t really say much about what this book is about. I thought it was a book about euthanasia at first. Turns out it’s something completely different. It’s actually a World War II related story. I have sort of mixed feelings about the novel, now that I’m finished. Some parts were extraordinarily excellent; other parts were quite dull and cliche.
The Storyteller starts with Sage Singer, a young woman who is a baker. She’s a loner who has taken to working/baking through the night and sleeping through the day. Her only friend is Mary, who is also her boss. She dates Adam, a married man, because if he ever left, well, she could say she didn’t lose someone she never truly had. She has been harboring a lot of guilt ever since her mother died, for which she blames herself for. She attends a grief therapy group, where she doesn’t participate all that much to be honest, but still finds herself frequently going.
It is at the grief group she meets Josef Weber, an elderly 95 year old man, who is beloved by the small town. They strike up a friendship of some sort and it is then that Josef confesses something incredible to Sage: he is actually a former SS Nazi officer. He then proceeds to ask Sage for a huge favor — to end his life. Sage is Jewish, you see, and Josef hopes to gain forgiveness from what he has done during the war and to be put out of his misery, so to speak.
With this book, it feels like all the good parts are in the middle. The beginning and the end were really quite lackluster, in my opinion. I feel like Sage’s ex-nun of a boss and co-worker, the whole ‘Jesus bread loaf’ subplot, etc. that was present in the beginning was made intentionally quirky to try to make the beginning more interesting. Which didn’t really work for me, it just seemed kind of strange. Also, Sage and Josef’s relationship wasn’t really explored too much in depth. Like, he meets her a couple times then drops this HUGE bomb on her, “Oh and by the way, could you please kill me because I really want to die.” And then Sage kept entertaining the idea! What the heck?!
The middle of the book was a different story though — literally. We have two ‘biographies’, one from Josef’s time as an SS Nazi officer, and one from Sage’s grandmother as a concentration camp survivor. Hands down, this part of the book was the best. It was super interesting read about World War II from two vastly different perspectives. Lots of emotion combined with wonderful prose led to a very late night where I could not put the book down. Now, I’ve read a few things around the Internet where people were saying small parts of Picoult’s story aren’t historically accurate but I think I’ll give her a pass on it because she’s not normally a historical fiction writer. Might even be her first try, as far as I know. Anyway, from what I’ve read, it’s really small, minor details, so I’m not going to be super nitpicky about stuff like that.
Threaded throughout the entire novel, is another story that is written by Sage’s grandmother. Without mincing with words, it’s essentially a vampire love story, that she wrote during her time in the concentration camp. There’s supposed to be some allegory comparing the Nazis to vampires or something, I think, but I didn’t really get it. It wasn’t really a good story, to be honest. Every time I encountered another small section of the book dedicated to continuing this vampire story, I was tempted to just skip it over. I probably could have, but I also didn’t want to miss anything.
After the fantastic middle portion of the book (which is the bulk of the novel), we come back to the present day where Sage has enlisted Nazi hunter (a federal agent), Leo. Okay, here’s where the story went all wonky again and just felt too Hollywood for my liking, if you kind of know where I’m going with this. Sage and Leo fall completely in love with one another. Sage ends up doing Josef the favor and helps ends his life. Which I think was moronic; after all the trouble she went through trying to get him to confess to certain crimes and stuff so that Leo could arrest him or whatever, Sage just does her own thing and kills him anyway. And how was she planning to get away with this murder?! Because like it or not, it’s still murder and it’s not like Sage is a mastermind criminal. Someone is definitely going to figure out that Sage did it.
Anyway, I have gripes with this book, if you can’t tell. However, I cannot stress enough how wonderful and emotional the historical portions of this book were. It did feel like it was two/three separate stories wrapped in one book. I don’t feel like this is one of Jodi Picoult’s best novels but it was okay. If are a Jodi Picoult fan, I am sure you would read this anyway. If you are looking for a WWII novel, there are better ones out there, I would think, but this one is pretty good if you ignore the present-day parts.
My Rating: 3/5
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