Sara's Book Review I

Ok, so I've been thinking about this book for a while and still haven't been able to form an opinion either way about it. The book, by the way, is My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and I'll take a moment and issue a spoiler warning for anyone who may want to read this and haven't yet.

My most overwhleming feeling was that the book read sort of like an after school special. You know. Overwrought family drama populated by b-list actors manipulating the audience to cry in several spots. I did feel that some things about the book itself were manipulative. The ending, for one. It was like the writer wrote herself into a corner and felt the best way to get out of it was to kill off her main character. And the mother? I had a surge of anger every time I read a chapter written in the mother Sara's voice because while she was being a mother to Kate, her daughter with Leukemia (sp?), she was clearly not being a mother to her other 2 children, Anna and Jesse.

So how they react? Well Anna, the main character, had been genetically engineered to be a donor for Kate. At 13, she revolts and sues her parents for medical emancipation. Her older brother Jesse is invisible to his family and has become an arsonist. His father Brian, however, is conviently a fire-fighter so he puts out the fires Jesse starts. The idea that Brian is a fire-fighter is such a cliche that it almost made me laugh. He is a man who can control and put out fires at work but at home is at a complete loss. Sound like any better written television shows on FX?

Enter Campbell, the seemlingly in control lawyer who takes Anna's case pro bono. But he doesn't have control anymore than Brian does because he has a terrible case of epilepsy...and a service dog called Judge who warns him about upcoming seizures. This plot development made no sense to me. Wouldn't he have been on medication for seizures? Is it even possible for a dog to sense these things? Oh, and the guardian ad-litem Julia who is assigned to Anna's case just happens to be Campbell's ex girlfriend and one true love. Contrived? Of course. Did Campbell and Julia become more interesting than the main family at several points? Definitely.

And yes, Anna dies at the end, not Kate. There was a ton of foreshadowing about this such as the judge assigned to her case had a dead 12 year-old daughter and Campbell asked Anna a couple times what she was going to be when she grew up. I only realized this after I finished the book.

I liked the use of the chapters rotating points of view. I've always been a fan of this idea though I felt judy Blume did it best in Summer Sisters (if you haven't read that one, do). I liked her use of words and description. I just felt as though I had a love-hate relationship with the book as I read it. However, I read it in three days, so that says something about the pace and the writer's ability to capture her audience, no matter how manipulative her story.