Disappearing Acts is deftly and dramatically takes on questions of honesty, loyalty, redemption, responsibility, fidelity, and identity, addressing a fascinating premise: What if you found out that the father who you love and trust had actually kidnapped you, and deprived you of a mother who you spent your life mourning? It is easy to root for Picoult's heroine, Delia Hopkins, a likeable character who balances her devotion to her young daughter and the single father who raised her with a fascinating career career finding missing people as the handler of a bloodhound trained to track human scent. Her daily life is buoyed by the steadfast friendship of two men who love her, childhood neighbors: one, Delia's fiancee, an unstable but devoted alcoholic in recovery, confronting his own childhood neglect as he tries to parent the daughter he has with Delia, and two, their best friend Fitz, who is in love with Delia but is quietly sacrificing his own chance at happiness in order to see her happy.
Picoult keeps the plot moving with ever-more complex scenarios, challenging the reader to ask when breaking the law may be justified, what punishments are fair for what crimes, and whether it is possible to ever truly find redemption for past mistakes.
What makes the novel most interesting -- multiple points of view including Delia, her husband Eric, her best friend Fitz, her father Andrew, and her mother Elise -- is also the novel's greatest weakness. Although the frequent shift in perspective allows the reader access to each character's internal dialogue as the plot progresses, no character is allowed to fully develop, and the shift in time and perspective is somewhat choppy. At times, what is unspoken between the characters stretches credulity: we have access to their internal dialogue, but it is difficult to understand how the characters can function under such stress when they seem seldom to talk to each other about huge emerging issues. And while the storyline focusing on the incarceration before trial of Delia's father is harrowing and riveting, it stretches credulity that he would endure so much and take on so many challenges and dangers without communicating about any of it with his beloved daughter or attorney.
Picoult also touches on thorny issues related to incarceration and addiction, alcoholism and parenting, and child sexual abuse and recovered memory, not enough to be preachy or didactic, but just engagingly enough to pique thoughtful questions. Overall, it's a somewhat flawed novel structurally, but a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking read. At its end, I wished for a sequel, wanting to find out how these characters had rebuilt their lives after so many cataclysmic changes.
Picoult keeps the plot moving with ever-more complex scenarios, challenging the reader to ask when breaking the law may be justified, what punishments are fair for what crimes, and whether it is possible to ever truly find redemption for past mistakes.
What makes the novel most interesting -- multiple points of view including Delia, her husband Eric, her best friend Fitz, her father Andrew, and her mother Elise -- is also the novel's greatest weakness. Although the frequent shift in perspective allows the reader access to each character's internal dialogue as the plot progresses, no character is allowed to fully develop, and the shift in time and perspective is somewhat choppy. At times, what is unspoken between the characters stretches credulity: we have access to their internal dialogue, but it is difficult to understand how the characters can function under such stress when they seem seldom to talk to each other about huge emerging issues. And while the storyline focusing on the incarceration before trial of Delia's father is harrowing and riveting, it stretches credulity that he would endure so much and take on so many challenges and dangers without communicating about any of it with his beloved daughter or attorney.
Picoult also touches on thorny issues related to incarceration and addiction, alcoholism and parenting, and child sexual abuse and recovered memory, not enough to be preachy or didactic, but just engagingly enough to pique thoughtful questions. Overall, it's a somewhat flawed novel structurally, but a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking read. At its end, I wished for a sequel, wanting to find out how these characters had rebuilt their lives after so many cataclysmic changes.
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