Please, Darlings, Do Not Let This Ruin My Reputation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                              Now, girls, understand me, I am not one to pick up and read Miss Picoult, on my own.  But when a very good friend of mine pressed "The Storyteller" onto me, I was obliged, because she said there was something in it she wanted to discuss with  me.  And the only way I could find out what that was would be to read the book.

                                               It was surprisingly well written, engrossing, and harrowing.  When I hear the name of Jodi Picoult, I automatically think of "chick lit," but that was not what this was, after all.  It was a woman's story, yes, but more in the vein of Kate Quinn's "The Alice Network," and the even better "Lilac Girls," by Martha Hall Kelly.

                                                  Sage Singer is an independent, lonely baker, a spinster with no options, who keeps herself very close to the vest.  A customer, named Josef Webber, comes in to the bakery, and Sage befriends him.  As their relationship grows, he admits dark things to her--like, he was, in the past, an SS officer, who committed crimes against humanity, and now he wants atonement by having her kill him.  What is the poor girl to do?   The owner of the bakery, Mary, is an ex-nun, so while the book is primarily the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust, it gets some Catholicism in there, too.

                                                    But the real heart of the narrative is Minka, Sage grandmother's story, of the hell she went through during her years in Auschwitz.  And at whose hands, too.

                                                       Along with all this anguish and heartbreak, the novel has a twist at the end I never saw coming.   Sure, Picoult is not William Styron or Isaac Bashevis Singer, but she does write a readable, engrossing story, that held me to the end.  I never would have read it, had it not been pressed upon me, and I would say the same for more of Picoult--press her upon me, and I may read it,  But not voluntarily.

                                                         Those who liked "The Alice Network" and "Lilac Girls" will find this compelling.  And, however one may feel, to pull this off here, Picoult herself is hardly a bad writer, or this story would never have been so readable.

                                                            Sometimes, giving outside authors a chance, girls, can be an unexpected surprise!  This one sure is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!