My Sister's Keeper

I just lent my friend Fiona a copy of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. Part of me feels like a lending library: a source of enlightenment, passing out my knowledge to my friends. The other part is just a teeny tiny bit ashamed. As much as I would like to be able to claim that I was a cultured and artistic person, I am forced to admit that I love nonsense chick-lits and have a strange obsession with Australian soap opera; Home and Away is sheer genius.

Its been awhile since I've read any Picoult (although my I have several of her books) but what always strikes me about each novel is just how well-researched they are. I often get the impression that some writers are 'winging-it'; making it up as they go along. But Jodi, despite being a book-writing conveyor belt, has a way of realising each of her plots in magnificent detail.

And I haven't even mentioned her innate ability for plot-twists. No Jodi Picoult book has a generic ending and the last few scenes are almost always a revelation. That takes quite a knack as a writer - to be able to hold your reader captive until right at the very end of the book? I wouldn't mind that kinda skill myself!

I guess that is why her novels are now being adapted for the silver screen. My Sister's Keeper hits on so many topics relevant to today's society (as do many of Picoult's other novels - Nineteen Minutes focuses on the culture of bullying in today's high schools and the deep impact it can have; Keeping Faith focuses on our rejection of religion and press obsession with the unusual; The Tenth Circle looks at date-rape and the truth; Mercy discussed the controversial idea of euthanasia). In one novel we examine the family dynamic, the right of a child to control his or her own body, genetic engineering, problem children, teenage rebellion...

Warning: spoilers ahead!

As a two-year-old Kate Fitzgerald is diagnosed with leukemia, every parent's worst nightmare, as I experienced first-hand when my one-year-old neighbour was diagnosed with the same cancer.

However, the diagnosis is far from the hardest part of the Fitzgerald family's journey, for they take the controversial step of conceiving a genetically engineered child, Anna, to save their first daughter Kate.

This decision, is an easy one to criticise (or an easy one to praise?) but no person can claim to know how they would act in the same situation. A doctor offers you a chance to save your beloved daughter and welcome another child to your family? The appeal is obvious. The negatives only come after further examination. As a young child Anna is subjected to medical procedures and surgeries. As a healthy child with a disabled elder sister, I can't imagine submitting a child to such treatment. Would my parents have ever made the decision to use me as a medical convenience store? A little bone marrow here, a kidney there...I'd certainly like to hope that they wouldn't have, much in the same way that, as a seventeen-year-old adult, I would like to believe that I would make the decision myself to help Sarah in any way I could.

Picoult's ability to make us question our own reactions and her genuine relatability, lend her novels something rather more touching than your standard modern novel. Picoult understands that shaving your head for somebody you love can be the most loving gesture you can make - but how many of us could make it? I'm not entirely sure I could.

But Picoult's true genius has to lie in her ability to reveal astonishing twists at the very last minute. My favourite Picoult ending has to be in Keeping Faith. I read the book several years ago and still find myself wondering from time to time whether or not Faith was telling the truth about seeing God. She had stigmata, she quoted the Bible, she spoke in tongues for goodness sake...but all the same...To be able to leave such a long-lasting impression in a reader is an incredible talent. And to be able to repeat the feat time and time again?

So no, no I should not feel a teeny weeny bit ashamed at liking Jodi Picoult because she is quite frankly one of the most complex and inspiring writers of our time. I completely adore her.