Book No. 20 of 2020
If there was a such thing as an empathy muscle, this book would work it until it was sore. Nineteen Minutes centers on a school shooting, going back and forth from past to present in the lives of the people involved, and tugging at the complex web of love, pain, and social ties of a community.
When horrific things happen in the news, it is very easy as a bystander to assign the roles of hero, victim, and villain. Nineteen Minutes is a reminder that not only is the truth often more complex than that, there is so much that is crucial to each person’s individual narrative—before and after—that doesn’t get mentioned in the news stories.
Similar Reads
For another legal drama about a cataclysmic event in which the sympathies of its protagonists are constantly shifted, I recommend Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek.
For a similar dive into the ties and tensions between children and their parents and how it affects their community, I recommend Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere.