Stories From The Past

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult is an author who can write anything and I’ll read it. I’ll see that she has new novel released and without any hesitation the book will be purchased.  With that being said I didn’t know what I was getting into when I began this novel. I didn’t expect to get thrown into the horror that is the Holocaust. I didn’t expect to start crying on the couch when the SS officer recounted shooting hundreds of people simply because they were Jewish. I didn’t expect to put the book down because I couldn’t handle the Holocaust survivor, tell of the horror she lived through. I was completely unprepared and it left me raw. So let me prepare you. This is not a story to be taken lightly. It is a credit to the amount of research she put into this story and her talent as a writer that I was able to show such emotion when reading this book. But this is a fictional account of real events. What’s in the pages I just read wont compare to what people actually survived and that more than anything is what broke me while reading this book.

Now on to the story…

Josef Weber has asked Sage to help him die. He has tried to kill himself before and failed. He claims it will be a mercy to him but first she must forgive him. He was SS: a Nazi officer, SS-Totenkopfverbande, Death’s head unit. Even though she is a self- proclaimed atheist, she comes from a Jewish family and he hopes her forgiveness will be enough. What he doesn’t know is that her grandmother, Minka, is a survivor and still alive. Now it’s Sage’s turn to listen, to both of their stories. With the help of Leo Stein, an attorney from the Department of Justice who helps prosecute Nazis because of their war crimes, she searches for the answer within both of their truths. How can a well liked and prominent man in the community, once have been a part of the massacre that took place over half a century ago? How can a woman raise her family and love her grandchildren but never talk about her past? How does the monster in a man take over and who can be blamed when it does?

                Sage was put in an extremely difficult position.  After Josef reveals the truth to Sage she has to go back and listen to him recount the things he had done. Not only because she was having a hard time believing him but because she now had to collect evidence for the case she was building against him. Her grandmother had never spoke to any of her grandkids about her past and it was a truth she didn’t want to face. She revealed all to Sage. She spoke of the death she encountered, the loss she felt, the senselessness of it all and how hard it was to live after she survived.

                I found this novel to be disturbing in its honesty. Jodi is a beautiful writer and she chose such a powerful and emotional subject for this book. I loved that the main struggle of this book became trying to understand a monster. You can’t understand evil and Sage continuously struggles with what’s been presented. Here is a man, Josef,  who has committed horrible murders and believed what he was doing at the time was right. Then he hides for a half century and now comes to her asking for help. Sage has no reason to forgive him, especially not when her grandmother is living proof of the hell he condoned. This was a beautifully written novel meant to pull at your heart strings and put you in an unimaginable situation. Picoult is very adept at making you put yourself in a characters position and struggling with that character’s problem as well as doing some soul searching yourself.