Another book review. This book was written by Jodi Picoult, whom I’ve never heard of before, but on the back of the book it says she’s had ten books on the New York Times Bestseller list. Now, I personally think that particlar list is stupid, but ten books? And she looks like 30 in her picture. Little jealousy going on here.
This book is about a family with three kids, a son and two daughters. The daughter in the middle has leukemia, and the second daughter was genetically engineered to be a donor match for her sister. When the parents first decided to do this, they were only planning on using the blood from the umbilical cord for their older daughter, but when she relapsed five years later, they used their youngest daughter again. And again, and again. On and on, so every time the sick sister ends up in the hospital, the well one does too. Whent the younger daughter is 13, her sister needs a kidney transplant, and she sues her parents for medical emancipation. In other words, she can make her own decisions about her medical care.
The whole scenario is fascinating, and all the characters are beloved by their author, and thus by the reader as well. It’s fun and interesting and scary to watch the mother be such a good mother and then make such freaky choices, although you can track with her frame of mind. The interactions between the characters is priceless, and highly enjoyable. Even with a very serious subject, this book managed to make me smile and laugh and feel good about life in the world of the book.
I only had a few complaints, none of which would have stopped me from reading the book if I had known about them beforehand. One is that the book is written from multiple points of view, which is a hard thing to do and Picoult handles it very well. Accept that all the characters have the same voice, they sound or think differently from any of the other characters, which makes them all sort of mush together. The book is about 400 pages long and could probably be about 300 without breaking a sweat; it gets a little redundant before all the fun surprise stuff at the very end.