Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes is a novel by the American writer Jodi Picoult, published in 2007 and set in a small town in New Hampshire.

The book opens on an ordinary school day in Sterling and stays with its characters through it: Alex Cormier, a superior court judge; her daughter Josie, who is in the same year as the boy with the gun; Lacy Houghton, the shooter's mother; and Patrick Ducharme, the town's only detective, who is first into the building. The novel then works backwards and forwards through the court case and through the school years in which Peter Houghton was pushed, mocked and left alone. Picoult gives each of the parents and professionals a share of the story and refuses to make the answer simple, so the reader has to hold two ideas at once: that what Peter did was intolerable, and that the people around him had a hand in making him. The legal process is set out in detail, and so are the small domestic routines that carry on while it runs.

The title refers to the length of the attack, and the last part of the book belongs to the courtroom, where years of bullying have to be turned into an argument about responsibility.