The Storyteller

I started college as a History major and English minor, switched to a double major, and graduated as an English major and History minor. I love reading (clearly, hence the blog) and I love history. What I discovered though is that I don't like political or economic or even really military history (although learning about wars was always one of my favorite things). No, the history I really love to learn about is people; how they lived, how they acted, how their life was different than mine is today. "History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them." (Pg 373) And in school, even college, you don't get a lot of that kind of history. So instead I turned to books, not only for my own enjoyment but also to learn. I read quite a bit of historical fiction and it's allowed me to learn about different times and people without having to also learn about politics and economics. And yes, it's fiction and not everything is 100% true but a good author does their research and I have learned things from books that we were taught in class. I did a review of The Book Thief, which deals with WWII but from the point of a young German girl. It was different from your average book about that time and absolutely incredible. I just finished another book about the Holocaust, although this one is set in modern times. Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller is about a man in his 90s who was an SS officer and wants a friend of his to kill him. It's powerful, graphic, and surprising. And it's beautiful.

SPOILERS!
Little bit of plot. Sage is a baker in her early 20s who has a scar on her face and is having an affair with a married man. Josef confesses to her that he was an SS officer named Reiner Hartmann and asks her to forgive and then kill him, since she is Jewish by birth though not by practice. Leo works for the office of Human Rights and Special Prosecutions and he is trying to help Sage prove that Josef is who he says he is. Minka is Sage's grandmother who is a Holocaust survivor and was at Auschwitz. And interspersed through their POVs is a story about a young girl who falls in love with a vampire who killed her father.

The book is split into three parts. Part I is Sage learning about Josef's past and getting in contact with Leo. Part II is Minka's account of her experience during the war. Part III is how everything ends. The whole book deals with the issue of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. Can Sage kill Josef if he asks her to? What will that do to her? How can she live with that? Is it enough knowing that he killed or participated in the death of thousands of Jews? There's no answer. You can't answer questions like those. The whole situation is too personal, too fresh, too fragile. The questions asked in the book are the same ones that historians and people have been asking since the Holocaust happened. And Picoult's answers are interesting.

"Did I know this brutality was wrong? Even that first time, when my brother was the victim? I have asked myself a thousand times, and the answer is always the same: of course. That day was the hardest, because i could have said no. Every time after that, it became easier, because if I didn't do it again, I would be reminded of that first time I did not say no. Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't any guilt." (Pg 120 Josef)

"I did not think about what I was doing. How could I? To be stripped naked, shouted at to move faster and faster toward the pit with your children running beside you. To look down and see your friends and your relatives, dying an instant before you. To take your place between the twitching limbs of the wounded, and wait for your moment. To feel the blast of the bullet, and then the heaviness of a stranger falling on top of you. To think like this was to think that we were killing other humans, and to us, they could not be humans. Because then what did that say about us?" (Pg 156 Josef)

"Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other." (Pg 111 Josef)

Sage hears both Josef's side and Minka's. She hears from the predator and the prey, the victim and the attacker. It makes things hard for her, to reconcile this old man who everyone in the community loves with a cold-blooded killer who murdered innocent people. Especially since Josef and Minka crossed paths in Auschwitz. Minka worked as a secretary for Josef's brother, who was also an SS officer. Franz was not as brutal and violent as Josef, although he could be if the occasion called for it. Minka started working for him after the story she was writing was discovered. Her story is the one interspersed throughout the book. Although it deals with supernatural creatures, it's a clear allusion to the situation between the Germans and Jews, and the undeserved prejudice for something that is not the fault of the Jews. Minka's story kept her alive for a time, the way Scheherazade used her storytelling to stay alive. In the end, Franz is not able to hear the rest of her story and neither is Sage as Minka left it unfinished, leaving the ending up to the reader.

When Picoult explained Minka's reasoning in leaving her story unfinished I was afraid that meant the book would not have a solid ending. But it does. Sage manages to get proof that Josef was who he said he was and Leo is going to arrest him. But Sage goes through with killing Josef. She doesn't forgive him but she wants to keep the promise she made, even if it means she has to kill someone. That's not the end though. When Josef was an SS solider he had had his blood type tattooed to his arm in case he ever needed blood. He removed the tattoo but his SS records still listed his blood type. When Josef tries to kill himself because he believes Sage won't kill him, he receives a wristband at the hospital with his blood type. And when Sage and Leo arrive at Josef's house to arrest him after Sage has killed him, she sees the wristband and realizes that Josef was not Reiner Hartmann. He was Franz Hartmann, the scholarly brother who was so enthralled by Minka's story and not as terrible as his brother, but who in the end watched his brother die and did nothing to save him.

I don't remember when it was, but there was a moment when I thought that maybe Josef was Franz and not Reiner. I dismissed the thought but it turns out I was right. I wasn't exactly expecting it. It certainly explains how Josef was able to pass himself off as Reiner so successfully; as Reiner's brother he would have known about the things Reiner had done. But still, poor Sage. You can't exactly say she killed an innocent man, but she didn't kill the man she expected. And even after all those years, Franz still had the original copy of Minka's story and was still trying to figure out the ending.

I loved it. Even with the plot twist and the dark subject matter. Yes, there were lighthearted moments. Leo mentions that people know when someone was a Nazi because "he's got a European accent and wears a long leather coat and has a German shepherd." But Picoult was also not sparse on the account of Auschwitz and the treatment of the Jews. The novel is graphic, it's dark, and it can be hard to read. It's so hard to imagine that these things really happened, that humans treated other humans like that. But it's also captivating and beautifully written. You want to know what happens next, both to Minka and Sage. You know Minka survives, but how? And you hope that Sage realizes she's worth more than being the other woman, which she finds through Leo. And while there is still no answer to the difficult questions presented in the book, Picoult manages to give different interpretations that leave you thinking long after the book is finished.