The Best Thing About this Novel
The battle between a daughter conceived to save her cancer-stricken sister through continuous donations and now deciding that enough is enough, and the parents (mainly mother) who have been making these medical decisions and are now asking her to donate a kidney as a last-chance solution is fascinating.
The problem, besides what turns out to be a manipulative ending, is how the story is told.
Problems with the Story's Style and Perspective
1. The multiple point of view technique. An author needs to have a very good ear for voices to pull this off, and Ms Picoult doesn't seem to have it (at least in this book). Without the name headings for the various sections, it would be difficult to distinguish between the mother, the father, the lawyer, the social worker, the troubled teenaged son, and the thirteen-year-old girl at the center of the case. There are no visible differences in the first-person narrations, other than the use of swear words by a couple of the characters, and this is especially noticeable when considering the various ages and backgrounds involved here. It might have worked as a third-person omniscient point of view that jumped from one character to the next, but not in first person.
2. The constant digressions to make poetic analogies. These need to be used sparsely, or they will break the flow of the story. It was very distracting to have every few paragraphs interrupted by observations on life, the universe (Mr. Fitzgerald is an amateur astronomer), and everything. There's always a memory lurking around the corner, and it becomes very tedious by the end of the book.
3. Related to the previous point, the use of cliched expressions is also a problem. Most are in the vein of "When [insert circumstance, real or metaphorical], you just have to [insert solution to said circumstance]." They become trite and tiresome, and they detract from the reading.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned earlier, the ending feels like a betrayal, almost an insult to the reader. Without giving it away, the story would have been much better had it ended right after the trial. Of course, things like this do happen in real life, but in a novel that is already emotionally intense, it seems set up, forcing the characters to play out an extra act of the drama. It felt cheap and lazy, an easy way out of the "what will happen now" that could have been a perfect ending, and a shameless manipulation of readers who have already had to face the difficult ethical choices presented in the story, alongside characters they have (hopefully) learned not to treat as “good” or “evil” entities.
The verdict? It's certainly a page-turner, but the style can get in the way, and the ending feels forced and over the top.
Book Details
Jodi Picoult. My Sister's Keeper. New York: Washington Square Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0743454537
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