The Storyteller - Jodi Picoult

Ever since I read The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult has been one of my favorite authors. Now, I have not managed to read every novel that she has written...and it is not very likely that I will put in much of an effort to track down her older novels...but I've enjoyed almost all of the novels that she has written. 

 

Still, despite enjoying so many of Picoult's books in the past...I was surprised by The Storyteller.

It had gotten good reviews, and initially, after reading it I could not help but rave about it. Now though, after having some time to digest and sort my thoughts I'm realizing that t was not as good as I initially thought.

 

The Storyteller could be read as three separate stories. First, you have Sage's story, the main story in which Sage befriends an elderly man she meets in her grief support group. As their friendship progresses, Sage discovers that Josef was an S.S. Officer during the Nazi regime.

Next you have a fictional story that Sage's grandmother wrote as a young girl and Sage's grandmother's personal account of her life during the Holocaust.  

 

Sage's grandmother's stories, both fictional and historical were the absolute highlight of this book. As I read her "account" of the Holocaust and her experiences in the Jewish Ghetto and the Death Camps I was completely mesmerized and I literally kept forgetting that I was reading a fictional account. The fictional story inside the novel was just as chilling and haunting. But Sage's story...well, it could have been a lot better. I think her story had too much going on, between her job as a baker, her romance with a married undertaker and then romance with the FBI agent who she contacts after discovering Josef's dark past. Since The Storyteller already had those three separate storylines, the various subplots in Sage's life felt like too much.

 

It was still a great book, and one that I do definitely recommend but it is far from a perfect book.