Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The reality of fiction

Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors. I have read several of her novels, My Sister's Keeper, Vanishing Acts, The Pact, The Tenth Circle, and night before last I read Nineteen Minutes.
Nineteen Minutes is about a school shooting. A high school but having just finished the novel hours before I immediately thought of the story when I heard the news about the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. One of the things I love about the author is her ability to present opposing sides of various issues. The way she can take me as a reader inside a characters head and make me feel what it is like to be them. Even characters that on the surface have no redeeming qualities, or share views that directly oppose my own. And as always she seems to have her finger on the damaged pulse of our society.

The way I see it the world would be a much better place if this type of understanding happened in the real world as well as on paper. A little compassion, even for those we don't agree with, could work miracles. Of course that compassion has to go both ways.

If you get a chance pick up one of Jodi Picoult's novels and read. I think you'll find it money and time well spent.

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