This was my first try with a new author. I've never heard of her before though she is acknowledged as âthe New York Times bestselling authorâ on the book itself. I will probably read another by her again but I think it might be a little bit before I try it. If all of her books are as emotionally charged as this one I'm going to need some recovery time. I will say that it was a page turner for me though; I read it in two nights at work.
The premise of this novel is that thirteen year old Anna has a sixteen year old sister, Kate, and Kate suffers from a rare form of leukemia. Anna can rattle off medical terms and procedures faster than most medical experts; not surprising since she's been the donor for Kate's numerous life-sustaining treatments since Anna was born. In fact, Anna was conceived as a perfect donor match for Kate--her first donation was the placenta, rich in stem cells. Now, Kate is in late stage renal failure and Anna is taking her parents to court for the right to make decisions about her own medical treatments.
I loved the turns this book takes at the end though I would have preferred a different ending. I never saw either of the main twists at the end coming though one of them I should have. The last one hit me out of left field though once I started reading it I knew what was coming.
Picoult does a good job using alternate viewpoints to portray each member of the family, the lawyer Anna retains and the guardian ad litem appointed to her, as richly drawn characters. I was impressed by Picoult's ability to manage lots of minute details in what was already a fairly complex story. Each of these characters that tell their story gives some insight into what is going on in this family's world or into the motivations of the characters. At times, the alternate viewpoints pick up right where the previous left off, showing us the scene from another's point of view; at other times the action moves some other place, showing us that the world continues on for others even as Kate and Anna's world is spiraling around them. This management of detail adds to the story for me, by giving us glimpses into why the son acts out, into the lawyer's past, into how the decisions were made for Kate and subsequently for Anna. Not all of the story centers around the child who is sick and the child who is well but might as easily be sick given how often she sees the inside of a hospital yet even the parts that don't contain bits of information about them add to the story in complex ways.
And that is perhaps the true gift of this book, that it intertwines the complex with the simple, the past with the present, the moral with the just. Reading I could understand why the decisions that were made were made but I could also see how one child seemed to be invisible to her parents because of the sicker child.
All in all I give this book a good rating but I warn you, it's a tear jerker. I also don't recommend reading it in public, least of all at work where people can see you crying your eyes out.
The premise of this novel is that thirteen year old Anna has a sixteen year old sister, Kate, and Kate suffers from a rare form of leukemia. Anna can rattle off medical terms and procedures faster than most medical experts; not surprising since she's been the donor for Kate's numerous life-sustaining treatments since Anna was born. In fact, Anna was conceived as a perfect donor match for Kate--her first donation was the placenta, rich in stem cells. Now, Kate is in late stage renal failure and Anna is taking her parents to court for the right to make decisions about her own medical treatments.
I loved the turns this book takes at the end though I would have preferred a different ending. I never saw either of the main twists at the end coming though one of them I should have. The last one hit me out of left field though once I started reading it I knew what was coming.
Picoult does a good job using alternate viewpoints to portray each member of the family, the lawyer Anna retains and the guardian ad litem appointed to her, as richly drawn characters. I was impressed by Picoult's ability to manage lots of minute details in what was already a fairly complex story. Each of these characters that tell their story gives some insight into what is going on in this family's world or into the motivations of the characters. At times, the alternate viewpoints pick up right where the previous left off, showing us the scene from another's point of view; at other times the action moves some other place, showing us that the world continues on for others even as Kate and Anna's world is spiraling around them. This management of detail adds to the story for me, by giving us glimpses into why the son acts out, into the lawyer's past, into how the decisions were made for Kate and subsequently for Anna. Not all of the story centers around the child who is sick and the child who is well but might as easily be sick given how often she sees the inside of a hospital yet even the parts that don't contain bits of information about them add to the story in complex ways.
And that is perhaps the true gift of this book, that it intertwines the complex with the simple, the past with the present, the moral with the just. Reading I could understand why the decisions that were made were made but I could also see how one child seemed to be invisible to her parents because of the sicker child.
All in all I give this book a good rating but I warn you, it's a tear jerker. I also don't recommend reading it in public, least of all at work where people can see you crying your eyes out.
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