Blog

I probably would never have picked up this Jodi Picoult tear-jerker on my own if it weren't for a planned girl's-night-out to the movies in a couple of weekends. To ensure everyone has a fun time, and that we all stick to the date we have carved out of our hectic schedules, I borrowed my friend Robbin's copy. (A strict personal policy is to never watch a movie that has been based on a book unless having read it first.) She handed it to me with glowing recommendations: "You are going to cry the whole time - especially at the end. The one-liners are great. The book is fantastic!"

Nothing like a witty weeper to wet a girl's appetite.

In a matter of two evenings, I devoured the entire 423 pages voraciously. The book did have me crying by the end, but not all the tears were sad. And yes, the one-liners are really, really good ones - especially any from one of my favorite characters, Campbell Alexander, the lawyer.

But what surprised me most - and what I enjoyed best - were the multiple layers of understanding that the characters drew out from me.  It's one of those stories that makes you think you've completely digested a scene, but then two hours later - while driving or doing the dishes or writing an email - a whole new perspective or question out of that scene punches you in the gut and then you begin a mental debate in your mind that takes a couple of hours more before you reach an "ah-ha!" moment. I LOVE that!!

Before we go any further, here's a quick synopsis from the back of the book:

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate - a life and a role that she has never questioned… until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister - and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable… a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

With a plotline like that, it would be really easy to get mired into melodrama or unrealistic perspectives and reactions from the characters. Ms. Picoult adeptly avoids all those pitfalls that could ruin such an excellent conflict by using one of my favorite techniques to read: first-person POV. Even better still, each chapter is from the POV of a different character in the story, and the plot moves along at perfect speed from one character's memories, opinions, and thoughts to the next character's.

She really does a great job with this - each character sounding and acting like his or her own person and not just a show-&-tell of what the author thinks the character would think and say. Such credibility to character is hard enough to do with just one personality, one first person point of view; but having done so with seven, giving each a distinct voice and flavor, is positively brilliant. Ms. Picoult shines at it.

I could go on and on with the many reasons why I enjoyed this book, but I won't. I'll just close with one of my favorite reasons why I love it so much:

I have a brother and a sister. I love them.

I love them so much that even the hypothetical situations where I might be faced at losing them makes me ache, and I immediately have to switch off the train of thought before I fall to pieces. My favorite uncle once said that the bond between a person and his or her siblings is a relationship that can't be found anywhere else, because somewhere up in Heaven - at one point before we came down to this place called Earth - we chose each other to belong to. We said 'Okay, of all the people here, YOU are the one I want to share DNA with. You are the one that I want to have remember my childhood with me.'

And I totally think this is true.

For better or for worse, we are what we are and we are what we've got. And even at the worst, the fact that we're going through it together  makes that moment something of the better.

In medieval times, the word "keep" also meant that of a "stronghold, a place of defense during times of uncertainty and war, but a home during times of peace and prosperity." I like that fogotten meaning.

I like knowing that I keep my sister and brother, and they will always keep me.

Thanks, Ms. Picoult, for helping me remember that fact.