From Goodreads.com:
Sage Singer befriends an old man who’s particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone’s favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses his darkest secret – he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.
What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who’s committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren’t the party who was wronged? And most of all – if Sage even considers his request – is it murder, or justice?
My review:
I don’t read much of Jodi Picoult’s work – My Sister’s Keeper was the only other work I’ve read by her. Regardless, I heard a lot about The Storyteller and the description sounded interesting. so I thought I’d give it a go. (I’m also a bit of a sucker for historical fiction, if there is such a genre.)
The Storyteller has a little bit of everything, and I really enjoyed reading every part of it. From Sage to Minka to Josef/Reiner to Leo … their stories were wonderful. Especially Minka and Josef’s. While the book itself is fiction, you know that their stories are probably very true in regards to the Holocaust. I couldn’t pull myself away from reading what their lives were like during the war, as hard as it was sometimes.
Even the story within the story – the one of Ania and Aleks – was good to read.
I couldn’t help but like Sage. Between her trying to figure out what to do with Josef’s request, to figuring out what love really is, I couldn’t help but cheer for her.
I really don’t have too much else to say about The Storyteller other that it was really just great to read. I give it 5 stars out of 5!
