SarahJanet's Books

My Sister's Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I waited for about six months for this book, so the anticipation was perhaps working against it when I finally got my hands on it. (Fortunately for those of you who read everything I recommend, it has since been chosen for the senior division of YRCA and will therefore be much easier to get ahold of. This is exactly what happened with me and the Time Traveler’s Wife last year – I wait ages, and then as soon as I get it we get dozens of paperbacks for YRCA. Oh well.) My obsession with this one was a little weird – somebody checked it out from me, I glanced at it, decided it looked interesting, and put it on hold. But since it was on my hold list for so long, I got kind of obsessive about seeing where I was in the list, how long I’d be waiting, et cetera. (I did the same thing with The Girls, but it wasn’t nearly so bad since it took about six weeks for that to come in.)

Uh, right. The book. Anyway, the concept of it was great – really interesting idea, and definitely timely. The basic gist of the idea is it’s the story of a girl whose parents conceive her (through IVF, so as to be able to selectively choose her DNA) to be a donor to her older sister, who has cancer. Initially, it is just the cord blood they want, but as both girls get older, they continue to use the younger sister as a convenient living donor for everything that the girl needs.

There were elements of it that were immensely predictable, but the story was good and quite engaging. I zipped through it one night when I was home alone (and just sat and read – unusual for me since I’m prone to excessive multi-tasking), and I would have given it an unequivocal recommendation if it weren’t for the ending. Now, I’m not against endings with a twist. Some of my favourite books have had major twists at the end, and if it works, I’m a big fan. (We Need to Talk About Kevin is the prime example of that – the ending just blew the socks off me.) But this is an ending that tries to be mind-blowing and just ended up being totally contrived. A twist has to be shocking but not over-the-top. This was over the top.

It really was too bad, because the story of this girl’s struggle to assert her own identity in a family where it is usually forgotten, but the ending soured me on the book overall. As I said, it’s been chosen for YRCA this year in the senior category, and I think it’ll go over really well with the older teenage crowd that it’s aimed at. (It’s an adult book, but the 15 and up crowd will go for it, I think. These illness/disability/death books are always a hit with the girls who like to weep over books. I know this because I was one of them as a teenager.)

Anyway, it’s a good book, and I’d recommend it because the concept of it was interesting and thought-provoking (it would make a great book club book, I think), but be warned that the end might not live up to the rest of the book. (I kind of felt that way about Prep too, actually, so maybe I’ve just become too picky about how books end.)

posted by SarahJanet @ 3:00 PM