Book Review: The Storyteller

Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller introduces us to Sage Singer, a baker. She works nights hiding her scarred face, her loneliness, and the memory of her mother’s death. In grief counseling group she meets Josef Weber, a 90 year-old man, who becomes a friend. And then he asks her to help him die, because he was a Nazi.

 

Sage’s journey begins. She meets Leo, a man working for the USA department that deals with Nazi criminals. With Leo, she interviews her own grandmother and hears her tale of a happy life that was destroyed – surviving the concentration camps, enduring brutality, and seeing a best friend shot. Sage had no idea about her Jewish legacy. She questions ” punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy.”

 

Cover blurb – In this searingly honest novel, Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future.

 

It is obvious that Picoult did a lot of research for this book and she indeed presents a brutal yet honest tale with characters that ring true. She treats the subject with respect.

 

 

P. 8  “Loss is more than death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.”  The Storyteller is a powerful story that moves between the past and present, and brings rich characters to life, even as they face death.