My Sister's Keeper

 Originally published December 10, 2009.

Author: Jodi Picoult
Published: 2004
Publisher: Washington Square Press
423 pages (paperback)
 
Summary: When Sara and Brian’s daughter, Kate, becomes diagnosed with leukemia at age two, the couple decide to conceive another daughter, Anna, to be a genetically perfect bone marrow match for Kate. Over Anna’s thirteen years, she’s endured a number of surgeries, transfusions and shots to keep Kate alive, but now, Sara and Brian want Anna to give Kate a kidney, and though Anna loves her sister, she’s not sure if she wants to give one up. Anna hires lawyer Campbell Alexander to help her fight for the rights to her own body, shocking her parents with the lawsuit against them. The lines between right and wrong begin to blur and a family begins to fall apart.

My Thoughts: My sister is a huge fan of Picoult’s novels and has a rather large stash of them, so I picked this one out to read since she gave such high recommendations for it, plus I wanted to see the movie, but wanted to read the book first. I started reading this one evening, and as soon as I began, I couldn’t put it down. It was extremely late in the night (or rather, morning) when I finally went to bed, and when I woke up, I had my nose right back in the book; I was done reading in 10 hours. My Sister’s Keeper is an amazing story of family, relationships, choices, life and death and I also highly recommend it. Few books have such amazing power to keep you gripped onto the pages, anxious to know what will happen next.

There is so much raw emotion, so many heartbreaking and tear-jerking scenes. I was drawn to all the characters — my favourite being Jesse, the brother of Kate and Anna. He’s the ‘forgotten child’ and despite him not wanting anyone to feel sorry for him, I do. I felt sorry for everyone. The characters seemed to jump out of the pages, I felt like I was right there, enduring everything they were enduring as well. I felt like I understood everyone’s reasoning and it actually hurt. The parents want to keep Kate alive, can you blame them? But Anna is starting to feel as if her existence is defined only in terms of Kate, and questioning who she really is. It’s a very tricky situation and I think because I was not able to pick sides, it made the story feel all the more real. I think one of the most haunting parts of the novel is when Campbell says no average person is obligated to save anyone … because for the most part, it is scarily true.

The only thing I had a little trouble with was the fact the narrative zips back and forth between past and present, so a few times, I got confused: “Is this happening right now? Or is this the past?” That’s just a small thing though. Anyway, this is an amazing book that I wasn’t able to stop reading once I started, and it has an ending that nobody will see coming (actually, it’s kind of out of nowhere to me, but I can accept it …) . When I turned the last page, the world felt a little bit different. It is inspirational as well as heartbreaking. You must read this!

Rating: 5/5