The Storyteller
Jodi Picoult, 2013
Historical fiction Contemporary fiction
Jodi Picoult braids a modern moral dilemma with a historical story of survival, asking who gets to tell—and be believed about—the past.
Feels like unease and melancholy. About morality, memory and society.
A page from the book
What charm looks like to the one person it doesn’t work on.
Other girls rhapsodized about his striking silver eyes, about whether his hair was as black as night or as black as the wing of a raven, about a smile so full of sorcery it could rob you of your thoughts and speech, but I did not see the attraction. Damian might have been one of the most eligible men in the village, but he reminded me of the pumpkins left too long on the porch after All Hallows’ Eve—lovely to look at, until you touched one and realized it was rotten to the core. Jodi Picoult.Picoult wrote two unpublished novels while studying at Princeton; her first published novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, appeared in 1992.
Books that feel like this
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson, 2009
Also memory and morality.
More by Jodi Picoult
My Sister's Keeper
Jodi Picoult, 2007
An exploration of ethics and sacrifice when a family's life is determined by a biological lottery.
Mad Honey
Jodi Picoult, 2022
A beekeeper, her hockey-captain son, and the charge that splits a small New Hampshire town — and everything a mother will not let herself see.
The Pact
Jodi Picoult, 1998
A small-town Maine novel about first love so certain it becomes dangerous, and the families who have to live with it.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Storyteller like?
- Feels like unease and melancholy. About morality, memory and society.
- What should I read after The Storyteller?
- If you liked The Storyteller, try Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Lock Every Door (Riley Sager) and Rock Paper Scissors (Alice Feeney).
A taste of the feed
The panic that arrives just after the point of no return.
It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.
Never Let Me Go · Kazuo Ishiguro
The part of poverty that people who haven't lived it miss.
Because here’s the thing about being poor—most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves. They don’t know what a fragile balancing act it is to stay afloat and that if, God forbid, you momentarily slip underwater, how hard it is to resurface.
Lock Every Door · Riley Sager
A marriage held together by a wedding ring and a storm outside.
Farther inland, a forest engulfs us. Ancient pine trees, dusted with snow, and taller than our house, are being bent out of shape by the storm as though they are matchsticks. The wind wails like a ghost outside the car, constantly trying to blow us off course, and when we slide a little on the icy road, I grip the steering wheel so tight that the bones in my fingers seem to protrude through my skin. I notice my wedding ring. A solid reminder that we are still together, despite all the reasons we should perhaps be apart.
Rock Paper Scissors · Alice Feeney
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