Page Twenty-Six

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I read this book after it was recommended to me by a couple of people. The premise was intruiging, and sounded like one of those "summer reads" you could get lost in for awhile. Anna is thirteen and her sister Kate is sixteen. Anna was conceived so that she could be a bone marrow match for Kate, who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was two. Anna has undergone multiple invasive medical treatments in order to help Kate fight her disease, and the novel opens with Kate in renal failure needing Anna to donate a kidney. Anna finds a lawyer to seek medical emanicpation from her parents so that she can finally have a say over her own body. The issues that surround this decision and the case that follows manages to sever the already fractured family in pieces.

The novel, even at 423 pages, is a quick read, as the subject matter keeps you engaged. Although, I think it was this very fact why I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would. Picoult jumps back and forth between narrative voice: Anna, Sara (mother), Brian (father), Campbell (lawyer), Jesse (son), Julia (still trying to figure out why she was really essential to the story). With the shifts in narrative voice also comes shifts in plot: Anna trying to find out who she is apart from her sister's saviour; Jesse, obviously plagued by guilt at not being able to save his sister, catapulting down a self-destructive path; and the oddly out of context relationship between Campbell (and his dog) and Julia. Because there are six different narrators in this book, I didn't feel Picoult accurately captured each of them. At times Anna sounded older than her confused, thirteen-year old self, and sometimes when I was reading the perspective of one character I'd forget who was speaking because the voices blended together ever so slightly. Each character also always had to end a section with something "profound," and I didn't think it always fit the character.

Ultimately, the book (and likely the forthcoming film version) will definately be a sob-fest for many, particularly if you yourself have a child. I think the character of Sara, the girls' mother, hits the nail on the head: "Ten years from now, I want to see your children on your lap and in your arms, because that's when you'll understand" (405). Readers with children beware: read only with a box of tissues.