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Shoudl have saved my money. And I couldn't figure out why the kidney needed to be from Anna in the first place. And, after reading my sister's keeper, I was able to call the ending to Handle With Care before i even started. And, the point many reviewers have been complaining about: the ending.I am not against character death, as a rule. illness + family battle + someone sues + tragic lawyer backstory + random ending. I just recently read her book Handle with Care. The first page hooked me in Costco's, and I bought the book with a B&N gift card. Why is her case of cancer so special.
This is one of those times. People get stranger's hearts all the time. It's just an easy out. We did NOT need to know about all the history between the lawyer and the guardian ad litem. See, the thing is, Jodi Picoult seems to have a recipe for a book. When it helps the plot.This did not help the plot.She says in interviews that she always knows the ending before she writes the book.
Basically, she seems to have a thing for long books. How, exactly, did that advance the plot. Well, many times, you write the book and realize that your origional ending did not really fit. Why couldn't she have just had someone drop a bomb on all of Rhode Island and be done.
You sort of know going into this book that it's going to be sad. Jodi does a great job of portraying each of the characters accurately. I truly could put myself in each of their shoes and understand some of what they may be going through. I haven't seen the movie yet, but it cannot possibly be as good as this book.
My Sister's Keeper was a terrific book. I loved the movie when I first saw it, but after I read the book, I learned the movie sucked. So if you have seen the movie and you liked it, you should read the book to see how much better it is. I liked this because you got to see everyone's side of the story. I read this book in under a week and I thought it was very good, and I recommend this book to anyone, no matter what your taste in books is. I enjoyed how the reader got to see what happened when the daughter, Kate, first got cancer in the early '90's. I loved the fact that the people narrating the book kept on switching to different characters. The movie left out a main character and the ending was completely different.
Sara, the mom, narrated this part. I saw the movie, My Sister's Keeper, before I read the book. And if you have read the book and haven't seen the movie, I would recommend that you not see it unless you want to be flabbergasted at how much a book can be changed. But let me tell you, you will cry.
The voices all blend together and do not sound like individual characters, a pet peeve I have when an author tries to do different points of view. Her parents had purposefully created her to save or prolong her sister' life. Grrr).So, I give My Sister's Keeper two stars because there were parts of it that I enjoyed, but the rest of it was downright awful. I hadn't planned to read any more of her books because I was more interested in the concept of this one than the writing, but, having gotten to the end only to be let down as a reader in such a huge way, I am 100% sure that I will never read anything else by her.
And then when I got to the end I was so annoyed that I seriously wanted to throw the book out into the mud. This made it feel like a young adult novel, but hey, I like young adult novels so I wish the entire book were told by Anna; I might have liked it a lot better. My mom had been telling me I need to read My Sister's Keeper, and she sent a copy of the book to me. It had an interesting theme and some dramatic plot twists, but lacked good writing (for the most part) and character depth. Still, the mother came across as a self-righteous know-it-all to me. The main character is Anna, who is supposed to give up a kidney to save her sister from dying from cancer, or at least to prolong her life a bit longer.
The story is told in different first-person points of view, with each chapter being told by a different character, whose name is plastered on top, and, get this, the font type and style even changes with each chapter so you know it's being told by someone else. He (the lawyer, but also his dog) seemed to be the only rationale character while the rest of them were floating around in no-man's-land.I did enjoy the plot of the book and it was a very easy read. Anna has been doing similar things since she was born and her umbilical cord was used for a transplant for her sister. Even my sister, who hates to read, read and enjoyed the book. I guess My Sister's Keeper was everything I had expected to be. By the way I later watched the movie and enjoyed it. I hated the parts that were told by the mother because I was mad at her for having a baby for her own selfish purposes-although some may not think that keeping another child alive is a selfish purposes). His character does the best job of capturing the anger and angst that I'm sure Anna was feeling and that most of the readers would be feeling.
Disclaimer: I neither read nor enjoy much bestselling contemporary fiction. I thought, I'd better read the book.Well. I didn't believe that she had had a successful law practice before beoming a mother, and I didn't feel any real love between her and her husband.Speaking of the husband, the chapters that were told by him and his son, Anna's brother, read horribly for me. Still, he comes across as superficial and stereotypical. Anna's came across as the strongest but the rest of the narrators--including the guardian ad liten and Anna's lawyer, both of whom get a turn--all jumbled together into one indistinguisable or trying-too-hard voice.The legal sub-plots of the book didn't seem realistic, although I did enjoy the character of Anna's lawyer and his German Shepherd dog named Judge.
And the brother, Jesse, is a juvenile delinquent, which also feels very contrived, who is out roaming the streets and starting fires that his father has to put out without knowing that his son started them (see the irony. My own mother could relate to the mother of the book more than I could, so maybe it's a mother thing. At the beginning of the book, Anna has decided to fight back and has hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit for rights over her medical decisions (the legal aspects of the book are pretty murky). Then, a movie was coming out about it with a concept that looked new and interesting: one sister was created so that her other sister could live. har har). I especially steer away from "chick lit" and even more some from family-based drama that is about a mother and her children, because I usually find that it's overly cutesy and I just can't relate to it.But.
I read it during a rainy camping trip where I had the luxury of laying in a tent all day. (Gag).I felt that Anna's voice was interesting and pretty convincing for a young teenage character. The ending was much better than in the book although they did leave some things out from the book's plot that I missed. I won't include any spoilers but it was the worst ending I think I have ever read, and such an easy way out that I think Picoult should be ashamed of herself.
There are exceptions (I like Elizabeth Berg, John Grisham, and some Stephen King) but in general, these books are not my cup of tea because I feel that they sacrifice good writing for popular plot twists and edge-of-the-seat drama. I wanted to find out what happened, and at times there was a piece of beautiful writing included. Most of the time, however, the writing was gimmicky and overly sentimental and I felt like I was just pushing through to see what happens, like in a movie, not a well-written book. He seems more ambivalent about the family's decision to have one child to save another child, but he comes across like a spineless wimp who's afraid of expressing his opinion to his wife, or, worse, like he doesn't care enough to do so. I guess in the end my foray into popular family-drama chick lit proved to be what I thought it would be: mostly empty, with a few splashes of interest and annoyance.For more book reviews and other posts of interest to readers and writers, please visit my blog, Voracia: Goddess of Words.
He's a fire-fighter, which I thought was conveniently contrived and also very unrealistic (I just kept thining, who is paying for this family's sometimes almost luxurious lifestyle when the father is a fire-fighter and the mother is a stay-at-home mom who only practiced law briefly before having kids and is therefore probably in a lot of student loan debt). What can I say. I cannot in good conscience recommend it, but I think it's one of those books that people read because everyone else is reading it and talking about it (which is never a bad thing, people talking about books), and because there's a movie, all of which were reasons I read it, so, read it and see whether you agree with my many critiques or if you find something redeeming in it. Try as I might to grasp it by reading her sentimental and overly-protective dribble, I wasn't convinced that a mother, let alone this mother who was telling the story, could really do such a thing, and feel no shame or doubts about it. I just wanted to skip them.
(Yes, I was that mad at how she wrote the ending. I would recommend the movie over the book, which I rarely do, but, there you have it.
It's required reading for the sophomore at his Catholic high school, which further piqued my interest. Again in this book, Picoult turns research on several topics into powerfully layered connectives among the characters. Well, the writer, through her mostly well-formed characters, says a lot to each reader regardless of his age, medical history or place in the family hierarchy. Sara's last request to Anna to donate a kidney to Kate is the catalyst for the storyline. In her other books, the writer has explored challenging questions with no easy answers. But, what could Picoult have to say this time that could possibly ignite a cross-generational conversation that interests a fifteen-year old beyond PS3 and basketball. I was already a Jodi Picoult fan when I plucked this book from my young guy's bookshelf. Further, Brian and Sara commit the minor child to several painful and risky medical procedures to save the dying sibling.
This is a realistically presented portrayal of a mother that would - and does - sacrifice two children for the uncertain survival of one. I did not close the book with a changed mind: the idea is still abhorrent to me for parents to design a baby for her genetic compatibility with a sibling. This page-turner was headed for five stars until the last few pages when the contrived closing left me tearful but not convinced. The step-by-step descriptions of Kate's diagnosis and years-long treatment are educational without overwhelming non-medical workers. Of course I knew from the movie trailers that this would be a story to inflame debate on ethics, sacrifice and family entanglements. The major characters clearly present their unique takes on the unfolding drama.
At different levels, my teenager empathized with each of the teenagers in the novel, asking a startling, "What if." What if he were Jesse, or Kate, or Anna. These details are important for the reader to understand fully Anna's role as Kate's designated savior - and the impact on Brian and Sara, the parents, and Jesse, their son. So, Sara's love-driven motives are understandable; but, I could not sympathize with her or like her.
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