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Review: Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

What Would You do to Save Your Sister?

Nov 28, 2008 Elizabeth Gregory

Jodi Picoult's eleventh novel follows the story of Anna, a girl who decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation.

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: Sara and Brian Fitzgerald discover that their boisterous and apparently healthy toddler has leukaemia. Their older son Jesse is not a suitable match to donate marrow to his sick sister, and when it is suggested that another sibling could be a match, Sara realises that “Dr Chance is talking about a family I haven’t had yet, of children I never intended”.

The Right to her Own Body

And so Anna is born, a “designer baby” especially created to save her sister Kate. The novel opens with Anna as a thirteen-year-old, tired of the constant surgery and transfusions that she must undergo for Kate’s sake and feeling that her parents value her simply as a blood bank of resources to be drawn on when required. Thus she makes the decision to go to Campbell Alexander, a lawyer, in order to sue her parents for the right to her own body; in other words, the right to refuse more operations even though it means her sister will die.

As the first section of the novel is narrated in first person by Anna, it is easy to sympathise with her point of view. She tells us her reasons for refusing further treatment: “the bruises and deep bone ache after I gave up my marrow… the fact that I’m not sick , but I might as well be. The fact that the only reason I was born was as a harvest crop for Kate”.

Multiple Viewpoints in My Sister's Keeper

However, as is often the case in Picoult’s novels, the narrative viewpoint switches between different characters, and sections of the novel are narrated by Sara, Brian, Jesse, Campbell, and lawyer (and ex-lover of Campbell) Julia Romano. This technique allows Picoult to explore different reactions to the same event, particularly as Picoult also moves backwards and forwards in time – Sara’s sections relate events of the early nineties, as Kate’s illness is first diagnosed, allowing the reader to experience first hand the impossible situation in which Sara finds herself.

Film Version Due 2009

Other than the forays into the past via Sara’s sections, the novel covers a period of less than two weeks, from Monday until the following Thursday. Some readers may find the ending of the novel rather predictable, but Anna’s journey towards a decision that affects both her and sister’s future is both moving and thought-provoking. The novel is currently being made into a film due for release in 2009, starring Cameron Diaz and Alec Baldwin; it will be interesting to see how the film handles the switches in viewpoint that the novel achieves so successfully.

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult is published in the UK by Hodder (2004), 407 pages, ISBN 978-0-340-83546-3.

The copyright of the article Review: Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper in American Fiction is owned by Elizabeth Gregory. Permission to republish Review: Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.