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The Storyteller  By  cover art

The Storyteller

By: Jodi Picoult
Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Jennifer Ikeda, Edoardo Ballerini, Suzanne Toren, Fred Berman
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Publisher's summary

Jodi Picoult's poignant number one New York Times best-selling novels about family and love tackle hot-button issues head on. In The Storyteller, Sage Singer befriends Josef Weber, a beloved Little League coach and retired teacher. But then Josef asks Sage for a favor she never could have imagined - to kill him. After Josef reveals the heinous act he committed, Sage feels he may deserve that fate. But would his death be murder or justice?

©2013 Jodi Picoult (P)2013 Recorded Books

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What listeners say about The Storyteller

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Love Jodi Picoult, but this audio book confused me

The substance of the story was deep and extremely descriptive, but in the throws of everything, I lost track of who was who, and found myself confused and trying to figure out what exactly was happening to who, and when, etc.
Maybe it was the fact that the voices of the characters were too similar and hard to tell apart.
Either way, I was a bit lost as to what was happening to who throughout the majority of the story, though it was incredibly intriguing, descriptive and captivating.
Towards the end of it all, I figured it all out, but I just feel that I'd enjoyed it more had I been clearer on the different characters.

Jodi Picoult is an INCREDIBLE writer, and I have loved everything I've read by her; it's just that this particular book gave me a bit of confusion.

Bottom line, the story is enlightening and I actually ended up loving it; I just think I'd have had a more emotional connection throughout had I been able to decipher what voice was which character.
It was an incredibly descriptive and captivating novel, nonetheless.

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25 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Multiple Voices

It's always a treat when you get to listen to more than one narrator to perform different characters in a book. It always helps the listener to identify their favorite characters in the story.

I'm not too familiar with Jodi Picoult's work. "The Storyteller" is only my second book from this author, but from what I've read so far, I really enjoy Picoult's writing, even though I belong to the male species. Her story telling is very engaging, but not gear to a specific gender unlike other romance authors.

I really enjoyed the fictional history with the grandma and her tale about the Holocaust. Part 2 in The Storyteller was excellent and I wanted to hear more, even though it was fiction.

Once I latch to an author, I have to read most of their novels. I will be purchasing more of Jodi Picoult's novels to expand my library.

The narration is one of the best that I've listened to this year because of the cast of readers.

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

She has outdone herself!

Where does The Storyteller rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I have about 400 books in my audible library, and this ranks among the best!

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Storyteller?

All of it.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

There are several narrators for all of the roles, and all were great.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The ending.

Any additional comments?

I have read all of Jodi Picoult's books, and they are all great but this one is the best.

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20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Can't do another one of these.

Perhaps if this is your first book about the Holocaust, this might be the right book for you. For me, I've read too much about it and am so bothered by it that I nearly had to stop listening. I was expecting a different kind of book and with a different angle. Not so. There's an added dimension with the brothers but it all comes down to the same evil. I simply can't bear it. I wish I'd never listened to it.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Reader BEWARE!

I'm used to being sucker-punched by Jodi Picoult. That's what makes her books so good. However, the ending in this book was predictable but the worst part was that nowhere in the description of the book are you warned that this book has extremely detailed and disturbing retellings of the Holocost. If I had known that I would have saved the book for another day.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Worth listening to

I have been a big fan of Jodi Picoult, despite the fact that in the past few years she seems to be sacrificing quality for quantity. In this book she has gotten her groove back on a horrific subject and handles it with amazing realism! The holocaust story was very well constructed and at some points literally had me in tears. The writing was Jodi at her best! The rest of the book was a disappointment. Perhaps she needed a more honest editor. First of all there were too many unnecessary storylines which just distracted from the important story. Second, her allegorical story/fable was unnecessary and did nothing for the book. Third, it seemed that she borrowed from, The Reader, in that a prisoner survives because of a story/reading. I also think the names she gave her characters are a bit silly-sisters named Sage, Saffron & Pepper - are you kidding me? The readers were all great except for the voice of Misha, I found her intonation annoying.
All in all, I enjoyed listening to this book and I would still recommend it even with the negatives that I have described.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Funny, bleak, enlightening, unputdownable

Jodi Picoult IS indeed THE Storyteller of our time. All her books grab you at the start, envelope you in intriguing plots and then trash the rest of your life until the inevitable ending, which you put off by reading the last chapter, very, very slowly.

Being a lapsed Jew myself, who has assiduously avoided all things Holocaust (as my Sunday and Hebrew schools filled me to a lifetime capacity of the atrocities,) I've got to admit, Picoult, skillfully brought that dark period of time to life in a way I'd never read before. Admittedly interminable at times, her tale flew by due to the empathy she illicits by drawing such complex, fallible, intelligent characters. The examination of forgiveness was quite fascinating as well. Her dialogue just gets better and better with each novel. Not sure how she manages to elicit a chuckle in the same paragraph that grips your gut.

Since Picoult is such a studious researcher, with each book I learn so much and am of course amply entertained by her excellent dose of low self-esteem female, estranged to men, finding love with the policeman, detective, lawyer or loner. Love the way she weaves in a well crafted mystery, amidst the squabbling siblings and small town eccentrics.

It's interesting to me that another favorite author, Alice Hoffman, also just re-examined the Jewish culture she shed in her youth in a very fine, albeit somber re-telling of the Masada massacre in 70 CE. (hmm…. in The Storyteller the main character, Sage, finds on the bedstead in the apartment of the ex-Nazi "an Alice Hoffman novel.")

Why, in reexamining ones religious roots, would one goes to horrendous genocides instead of looking at the religion itself? Remember, I'm a Jew as well, but still don't see the point of going over and over how we over-came being victims in the past. Where are the novels examining what the Israeli Jews are doing to the Palestinians, and why?

OK, done being a kvetch. Do read The Story Teller because it is indeed an excellent listen and damn fine historical novel as well. (And then answer my question, please?)

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

1001 Nights in Nazi Germany

Sage is a young woman who befriends an elderly man in her grief support group, and he asks her to kill him as a kind of twisted form of justice for his previous crimes 60+ years before when he was an SS officer..........but that's not really what the book is about. Too bad, because that would have made a more interesting book about justice, forgiveness, sacrifice, self-loathing, and self-doubt.

Instead we get a retrospective story about how Sage's grandmother lived and survived though World War II and internment in Nazi concentration camps, in great part because of her unfinished and ongoing story that she'd written.....the story had captivated an SS officer who helped her survive Auschwitz because he kept wanting to know what happened next in her story. That forms the biggest chunk of the book, and it's mixed with that telling of the story that she (the grandmother) wrote - which bears an unfortunate resemblance to a teen vampire love story. 'I killed for him, isn't that a sign that we were meant to be together?' -- Ugh!

There's a definite undertone of Christian mythology in the book, in spite of the fact that Sage is an atheist and her grandmother was a Jew who survived the holocaust: Mary, Joseph, Adam, and Eve (well, it's actually Eva), all appear and bread is a central thread as the staff of life and livelihood, and the manifestation of the baker's emotions. Overall, I thought it was rather heavy handed in it's symbolism and language.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not for me.

What was most disappointing about Jodi Picoult’s story?

I just figured out something. This book desperately needed to be edited. I made it to the second download and felt I did not know much more than I knew by Chapter 3. I was wondering why the author keep repeating the same information over and over. I am ready to start Chapter 7 and still don't know why the main character has a scar and further more I no longer care. Then it hit me...a book that has 2 to 3 downloads costs a bunch more than one where the entire book requires only one download. I think this encourages repetitive, long, drawn out stories that could have easily been edited into a concise and more enjoyable experience. After a while it just becomes blah, blah, blah.
Also, if I had known it was a story involving reference to the holocaust I would not have purchased it in the first place. I do remember and appreciate that horrid event in human history, but to me it is a cheap way to give a story meaning. I have read a number of books where the holocaust is the central theme like Schlindler's List and The Pianist and for me they are stories that help you see and remember. But, The Storyteller uses the holocaust to get the character where she needs to go. So my review is based on half the story because I cannot make it to the end. This is only my opinion and I note that many people really liked this book as you can see by the other reviews.

What three words best describe the narrators’s performance?

Very nice.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

The Storyteller

I am not sorry that I listened to this book if for nothing else then to have the vivid reminder of what mankind can do to each other in the name of War or God or whatever excuse they find. I didn't think however that this story blended well and I felt the boy, girl love stuff was silly considering that the bulk of the story was about the Holocaust.
It is so horrific that at times it was hard to listen to, but listen you must.

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4 people found this helpful