So Brandi and Jess think I may be an unemotional robot because I did not cry during Marley & Me and The Notebook. Now they can add My Sister’s Keeper to their supporting evidence. Everyone I’ve talked to about this book, the sales lady at James Avery, my former colleague, etc, have admitted to bawling like a baby while reading the book. Brandi’s mom and my colleague both said they started crying within 30 minutes in. I lasted the entire book without shedding a tear.
I just wasn’t very moved which did make me feel kind of like robot. The novel if you haven’t gathered from the movie previews, is about a girl who was conceived specifically to act as a donor to her sister with leukemia. As an adolescent, she sues her parents for medical emancipation. I used to be very interested in bioethical issues and have discussed a plethora of issues, so this particular issue wasn’t very new and pretty obvious. Emancipate her!
I didn’t really connect with ANY of her characters. It was hard to be sympathetic towards anyone except maybe the sister with leukemia but Picoult didn’t write from her perspective till the very end and that kept her at an emotional arm’s length. The parents are indifferent towards two of their three children. Anna, the sister suing her parents kind of bored me. The oldest and only son, Jesse was mildly interesting in his delinquent antics but that got old fast too. I just couldn’t really get into any of the characters. The only thing curious about the lawyer representing Anna was he had a service dog and wasn’t blind. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
This was my first Picoult novel. I’ve seen her all over the best seller’s shelves and in people’s hands in a lot of waiting rooms and gate areas in airports so I’ve been curious about her stuff. My first experience of her, I don’t know about the rest of her books but she felt like she tried too hard to make me cry. She also tried too hard to be deep that it just made me want to gag. She pounded a lot of star/astronomy analogies at her readers throughout the novel that also kind of made me throw the book at someone’s head. It was depressing, yes, but in a painful when is this going to be over kind of way and not in the oh my gosh, I hurt for all these characters kind of way. It was a LONG 460 pages. Lastly, the ending was super cheap and easy and sealed my dislike for the entire book.
Well needless to say, I don’t recommend this book and I do not have any excerpts I found noteworthy.
And there you have it.
P.S. For the record, I cried reading Kite Runner and while watching Armageddon and Hope Floats. So I’m not a complete robot.
Related Blog Entry:
May 27, 2007: Book review of Kite Runner