The Storyteller

The novel’s title, The Storyteller, hints that the telling of stories will be an important practice throughout the narrative. The book opens with a snippet from a story which is distinct from the main plot. Although the meaning of the Ania story is as yet unclear, readers can assume that this parallel narrative will hold significance to the main plot. The Ania story has many typical elements of a European fairy tale: a young girl living in a cottage in the woods, a small village, the presence of a malicious and potentially supernatural creature. However, the characters are not recognizable from any well-known fairytales. Later, Picoult will reveal that Ania is a character invented by Sage Singer's grandmother Minka, a Holocaust survivor. Withholding this information early on allows the reader to form an independent relationship to Ania as a character, and to intuitively recognize thematic resonances between Ania, Sage, and Minka before Picoult makes the true connection explicit.