The Storyteller

January 21, 2013
Picoult (Change of Heart) reconfigures themes from her other bestsellers for her uneven new morality tale. Twenty-five-year-old reclusive baker Sage Singer befriends the elderly Josef Weber, who shares something shocking from his past and asks her to help him die, a request that pins Sage between morality and retribution. Sage, a Jew who now considers herself an atheist, begins to think more deeply about faith. Picoult examines the links between family identity, religion, humanity, and how it all figures in difficult decisions. The three-parter is narrated by several characters, including Sage’s grandmother Minka, who survived the Holocaust. Snippets of a novel Minka wrote focus on a bloodthirsty beast, a metaphor for life in a death camp. Picoult’s formulaic approach to Minka’s accounts of the Holocaust is a cheap shot, but the author appreciates Sage’s moral bind. Nearly half of the book is devoted to a verbose, sad recounting of Minka’s time during the war, but the real conflict lies within Sage. That conflict, and the complexity of a character who discovers herself through the trials of Josef and Minka, is the book’s saving grace. Agent: Laura Gross, the Laura Gross Literary Agency.

May 15, 2013
When Sage, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, learns that a well-respected member of her community is a former SS officer who evaded justice for 70 years, she must choose between forgiveness and retribution. This recording features five skilled actors who perform a wide range of accents and languages well. The use of multiple voices deepens the already compelling story's impact. Unfortunately, the technical execution is not as impressive. Exaggerated gaps between tracks are distracting. VERDICT Although the subject matter is a departure from Picoult's previous work, her fans won't be disappointed. ["[Picoult's] myriad fans are in for satisfying doses of everything they've come to expect from her: compulsive readability, impeccable research, and a gut-wrenching Aha! of an ending," read the starred review of the Emily Bestler: Atria hc, "LJ" 2/1/13.]--Julie Judkins, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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