Book Report, March

Fiction, nonfiction, memoir, speculative fiction, fantasy

collage by author

Jodi Picoult (2013). The Storyteller. [Kindle]. Atria/Emily Bestler Books.

I was not planning to finish another book this month. I intended to start this one and have it ready for the first book of April. BUT, I could not put this one down. It is a Holocaust story, and in that sense it follows a familiar narrative that needs to be told again and again so we never forget. However, Picoult chose a unique point of view: the adult granddaughter of a survivor who didn’t know her grandmother’s history. Sage (and her sisters Saffron and Pepper — odd choices, but their roles are minor) grew up in a nominally Jewish home, a faith tradition that Sage abandoned after the death of her mother. Sage is a baker, working magic with bread overnight, alone in the bakery, which she prefers. Her face is scarred by the accident that killed her mother, but at a deeper level her heart is scarred by a lifetime of not feeling good enough.

In a grief group, Sage meets Josef Weber, a man who harbors 70 years of secrets from his life in 1930s and 1940s Germany. At this point, Picoult brings in her inspiration for the book, The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal which…