Book Review: My Sister’s Keeper – By Jodi Picoult

This may just be the best book I’ve ever read. If not the best, then certainly one of the top five. I read it last fall and haven’t stopped talking about it. I got my wife, and both daughters to read it. My little one (she’s 11) is still mad at me because it made her cry so hard. I gave it to both my mom and my sister-in-law for Christmas. Can you say “gut wrenching?” “Compelling?” Did I mention gut wrenching? This is actually one of those books that stays with you. Long after you’ve put it on back on the shelf, you find that it follows you in the car to work. It accompanies you in the shower. And everything you see reminds you. I timed it. I was heavy with this book for three full days after I read it. How many books have you ever read that stayed with you like that?

13-year-old Anna was conceived by her parents as a source of spare parts for her dying older sister, Kate. By 13, Anna has had enough and sues for medical emancipation. However, Kate needs Anna’s kidney or she’ll die. We watch her family and her life spin out of control as we continue to watch Kate fighting the cancer that is killing her and her family. The story is written in the first person, but from the perspective of each of its characters. Picoult allows each character to take turns telling this amazing tale. Beautifully written. Don’t forget the Kleenex. Here’s a little sample.

Just then, Anna enters the kitchen. She throws herself into her chair and ducks her head. "Where have you been?" Kate says.
"Around." Anna looks down at her plate, but makes no effort to serve herself."
This is not Anna. I am used to struggling with Jesse, to lightening Kate's load; but Anna is our family's constant. Anna comes in with a smile. Anna tells us about the robin she found with a broken wing and a blush on its cheek; or about the mother she saw at Wal-Mart with not one but two sets of twins. Anna gives us a backbeat, and seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about this New York Times best seller. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

From Publishers Weekly The difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and understanding in this 11th novel by Picoult (Second Glance, etc.). The author, who has taken on such controversial subjects as euthanasia (Mercy), teen suicide (The Pact) and sterilization laws (Second Glance), turns her gaze on genetic planning, the prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical and moral fallout that results. Kate Fitzgerald has a rare form of leukemia. Her sister, Anna, was conceived to provide a donor match for procedures that become increasingly invasive. At 13, Anna hires a lawyer so that she can sue her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned. Meanwhile, Jesse, the neglected oldest child of the family, is out setting fires, which his firefighter father, Brian, inevitably puts out.

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