2 posts tagged “review”

"Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplementation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate--a life and a role she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister. So, Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable--a decision that will tear her family apart and possibly have fatal consequences for the sister she loves."

Jodi Picoult's novels are more than interesting. They do not draw you into other worlds, but makes you take a look into things that are either taken for granted or people don't dare to look at.

In this part romance, part courtroom thriller and part social commentary, Picoult drives her readers through a family's tale of dysfunction, betrayal and redemption.

What enticed me in picking up the book "My Sister's Keeper" was it reminded me of a CSI episode that I watched where the "victim" was a girl, conceived the way Anna was, and whose seeming sole purpose was to give body parts to his brother with cancer. But "My Sister's Keeper" is far more complicated than the kidnap-murder case of CSI that I watched.

Here is a story of a family  who battles with death every single day for 14 years and is in the midst of moral and ethical dilemma with regards to their two daughters. The story is not just told through the eyes of Anna, the  "giving" daughter who seemed to only exist in relation to her sister Kate, but as well as through the eyes of Brian, the father, a firefighter who can save everyone else's life but his daughters'; Sara, the mother, a former lawyer that opted to just represent her children everywhere, every time, even in the court of death; Jesse, the brother, frustrated for not being worthy to save his sister and thus became obssessed with controlling something as uncontrollable as fire; and Campbell and Julia, Anna's lawyer and guardian ad litem, once lovers and now are caught in the Fitzgerald's war with Kate's leukemia and Anna's struggle to still be part of that war without being the only weapon.

Once I started reading the book, I wasn't able to put it down. I couldn't wait to know what happened to the characters. Picoult has written these characters in a way that there was no room for me to be judgmental of them, but a lot of space for hopes for them to grow.

I hoped for Kate to get the organ she needed to live, yet I also hoped for Anna to gain control of her body. I hoped for Jesse to feel he's worth something even if it didn't mean being a donor to his sister. I hoped for Brian and Sara to keep their family intact and not lose any of their daughters. And I hoped for Campbell and Julia to workout their issues from the past, not just for themselves but for Anna.

I had all these hopes for the characters, but the ending of the book was something far different from what I hoped for and nothing that I expected.

Sidenote:
From Wikipedia: There are plans by New Line Cinema to turn My Sister's Keeper into a feature film, to be released sometime in 2008. Nick Cassavetes is attached to direct it. It will star Cameron Diaz as Sara and Alec Baldwin as Campbell. Dakota and Elle Fanning were originally set to play the sisters but Dakota changed her mind when she found out she would have to shave her head to play the leukemia-suffering character of Kate. Elle dropped out along with her sister, and they were replaced with Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin.

Awww... The Fanning sisters would have been perfect for this movie!