The Storyteller

The Storyteller is a best-selling novel by prolific author Jodi Picoult. Published in 2013, it is Picoult’s 20th novel. Picoult is a prolific author known for tackling complex social themes and is the recipient of many awards, including the 2019 Hale Award and a lifetime achievement award from the Romance Writers of America. In The Storyteller, she weaves together several different narratives, delving into complex power dynamics and exploring themes of forgiveness, morality, and freedom of choice through the relationship between Sage Singer, the 25-year-old granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and Josef Weber, a former SS officer who turns to Sage to carry out his euthanasia.

Please be advised that The Storyteller includes depictions of assisted death by suicide and features discussion of self-harm and disturbing violence related to the Holocaust.

Plot Summary

Sage Singer is a reclusive woman with a large scar on her face, a relic from the car accident that killed her mother and left her orphaned. She lives in the small town of Westerbrook and works at a bakery attached to a religious shrine, where her late hours allow her to remain socially isolated. Sage is plagued by guilt over the car accident and an affair she is conducting with Adam, a married funeral home director. Sage was raised by Jewish parents but has abandoned religion in the wake of her accident. She is estranged from her two sisters, and her only remaining familial tie is to her grandmother, Minka, a Holocaust survivor.

Sage meets a 95-year-old man named Josef Weber at a grief therapy group and forms a tentative friendship with him. Josef is a beloved resident of Westerbrook, so Sage is shocked when he reveals that he used to be a guard at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Josef sought Sage out because he has been plagued by guilt for decades and wants her to help him die by suicide. However, he first wants her, as a Jew, to forgive him for his past.

Sage reports Josef’s confession to Leo Stein, a Justice Department worker who helps prosecute war crimes. As a practicing Jew, Leo is passionate about bringing the perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice. Leo is unable to identify Josef by name until he confesses to Sage that his real name is not Josef but Reiner Hartmann. When Leo investigates this name, it matches that of a former Auschwitz guard. Leo visits Sage in Westerbrook to continue the investigation. They turn to Sage’s grandmother Minka for more information. Minka has refused to speak about her experience in the Holocaust since moving to America, but Leo eventually convinces her to open up.

Minka and Josef’s firsthand accounts of their lives are threaded throughout the narrative. Josef describes being indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology at an early age. He excelled in the Hitler Youth and went on to the SS, committing countless murders as a young officer before being promoted to a position of power at Auschwitz. His younger brother, Franz, abhorred the Nazi ideology but was eventually compelled to join the SS and stationed at Auschwitz as well.

Minka grew up in a small village called Łódź with her father, a baker, and her mother and pregnant sister Basia. She enjoyed writing, working on a story about a vampiric creature called an upiór. Minka and her best friend Darija live a relatively carefree life until the growing Nazi movement arrives in their village. One by one, Minka’s entire family is killed, and she and Darija are deported to Auschwitz, where Minka’s story intersects with Josef’s. Josef is serving as the merciless director of the women’s camp. One day Minka is caught writing down her story and sent to Josef’s brother, Franz, for punishment. Franz is drawn in by her story, seeing himself in her remorseful antagonist. Rather than punishing her, he employs her as his secretary, giving her food in exchange for regular delivery of new pages.

One day Minka and Darija catch Josef stealing from his brother’s safe. Josef shoots and kills Darija, but Franz intervenes before he can kill Minka. Minka is sent on a death march instead, but escapes and is freed by Allied soldiers shortly afterward.

In the present day, Leo outfits Sage with a wire to extract the confession that will ensure Josef’s imprisonment. At their penultimate meeting, Josef confirms that he is the man who killed Darija and states that he would have also killed Minka if he could have. He also confesses that he watched his brother Franz die after choking on a cherry pit.

Having heard the history of Josef’s crimes, Sage decides that it is not her place to forgive him. She helps him complete suicide by baking him a poisoned bread roll. As he dies, he asks her “how does it end?” (455). This statement is contextualized when Sage looks through his belongings and realizes that he has lied about his identity. Josef was not Reiner Hartmann, he was Franz. He sought Sage out because of her relationship to Minka, the girl whose life he once saved at Auschwitz. His dying question was about the ending of Minka’s story, which he saw as an allegory for his own life.

As the novel ends, Sage conceals her role in Josef’s death from Leo.