The Book: Keeping Faith, by Jodi Picoult

The Story: Mariah and her daughter Faith show up at home one day to find Mariah’s husband, Colin, in bed with another woman… well, I guess technically they were in the shower, but you get the idea.  This isn’t the first time this has happened and Mariah has had enough.  She gives Colin the boot. She is totally destroyed but feels like it is the best thing to do for herself and for Faith.

Not too long later, Faith starts talking to an “imaginary friend.”  Mariah is disturbed but kind of lets it go… until Faith lets her know that her new friend is, in fact, God.  Yes, God.  Faith knows things that she couldn’t know about Mariah’s past and it really freaks Mariah out.  Soon after, Mariah’s mom has a heart attack and dies and Faith touches her and she comes back to life.  Everyone kind of flips out.  Was this legit or was it a coincidence?  Why would God speak through a 9 year old?  News crews, camera men, reporters everywhere.  Religious  nuts lining the streets.  That kind of thing.

One of those reporters is an atheist evangelist (is that even a thing?) named Ian Fletcher.  He’s made a living of going to the location of supposed miracles and de-bunking them so of course he gets the first flight to get a look at this girl who can supposedly raise the dead.  What he finds there isn’t really what he expected and he is kind of sent on a journey all his own.

What I Thought: I’m going to stop knocking Jodi Picoult’s books for being predictable.  Not because they aren’t…. but because I keep reading them anyway.  Meh.  What can I say?  They are generally a light, intriguing read that isn’t total fluff.  When I see them at the thrift store, I honestly can’t help but pick them up.  In my head I’m telling myself, “Jacki. You don’t really like Jodi Picoult.  Don’t get this book.”  I don’t ever listen to that voice. I get it regardless then I get mad when it is predictable.  Ugh.

Anyway!

I thought that this book was alright.  Like with most of Jodi Picoult’s books, I liked the idea more than the follow through.  The idea of an already dysfunctional family having to deal with organized religion, the medical profession, courtrooms and this whole slew of issues is totally appealing to me.  I like when authors put families in situations and kind of see how they wiggle out of them.  I also like the idea of all these different religions and how they would respond to all these miracles.  I think that Jodi Picoult probably had to do a lot of research into different religions and it seems like she was pretty fair and unbiased when writing this book.

My favorite part of the book was watching the mother/daughter relationships, both with Mariah and Faith and with Mariah and her mother.  I loved how she would get frustrated with her mom often, but when she needed someone to help her through her divorce and through the media storm, she went straight to her mom.  Being and adult child is kind of this weird thing to balance and I think that Jodi Picoult showed that just right.  Mariah and Faith was kind of an intriguing relationship to watch too.  She had always had a hard time with the idea of being a mother and felt inadequate in the role, but when Faith needed someone to back her up, Mariah did it without hesitation even though she wasn’t sure she even believed her.  There is something really beautiful about both of those relationships that I just really grabbed on to.

For me, the downside was stupid Ian Fletcher and anything to do with him.  I felt like his character was flat and phony and… yuck.  I hated how he and Mariah fell for each other.  There didn’t really seem to be enough interaction between them to foster that, it just kind of seemed like a plot device.  I thought that he probably could have been entirely left out of the story and the story would not have been lacking in anyway.

The only other thing that really bothered me was the changes in point of view.  It was pretty much in third person, but would sometimes change to be from Mariah’s point of view.  There were no signs (chapter breaks/page breaks/ font change) to show that this was going to happen, just all of a sudden you are inside Mariah’s head.  This really bothered me.  I felt like it disrupted the flow of the book and just didn’t sound right.

Conclusion: Typical Jodi Picoult stuff.  If you like her, you’ll like this.  If you don’t, skip it.  If you’re like me and just keep buying her effing books, please stop.

The Book: Handle with Care, by Jodi Picoult

The Story: During an ultrasound at 27 weeks, Charlotte and her husband Sean are told that their baby has a disease that makes her bones very, very brittle.  She already has seven broken bones and if she doesn’t die at birth will have many more.  They are heartbroken, but push on.  Willow is born.  More bones are broken, but she lives.

The story in the book takes place when Willow is five years old.  She has had sixy-something broken bones. She is smart and capable and adorable.  She falls and breaks both of her femurs on vacation and Charlotte and Sean are arrested on suspicion of child abuse.  When everything clears up, Sean decides to file a lawsuit because of all that they went through.  While the lawyer tells them that they don’t really have a case in this incident, but that they could possibly file a “wrongful birth” lawsuit saying that their doctor didn’t catch Willow’s disease early enough to allow for them to terminate their pregnancy.  All they have to do is say that they would have terminated, given the information earlier.

The decisions that are made based on this little tidbit and all of the fallout make up the rest of this story.

What I Thought: If I am judging this book based only on its own merits, I really liked it.  Like I’ve told you before, most of my favorite books are the “throw the family into a situation and watch them wiggle out” type of books.  This is exactly that.

The book switched points of view every chapter.  And not just between two or three characters.  I lost count.  It was literally every main character in the book, except for the MAIN main character, Willow.  This was kind of effective because it let you get into everyone else’s head, but it wasn’t really carried out effectively.  The voices all sounded very similar with the exception of the teenage sister, which sounded the same- only with the addition of far to many “like”s.

The moral dilemma here is what made the book worth reading.  At the beginning of the book, I found myself flip flopping back and forth- able to see the benefits of each side. After I made up my mind, however, I wanted to scream at the characters that were on the other side of the issue.  It was emotionally provocative, without a doubt.

But let me get right down to it.  I cannot judge this book based only on its own merit.  I read a book by Jodi Piccoult when I was in high school and I was wild about it. I mean, I fell in love. I read it probably a dozen times.  Then I read several of her other books. Not back to back, mind you, just when I came across them at the library or the used book store. They are all the same.  She just has this little outline that she uses.  She has to even have a hat full of characters that she pulls from to, just subbing out different names.

In case you’ve read any Jodi Picoult, just know that this one is My Sister’s Keeper plus The Pact, with the changing narrators, like in Nineteen Minutes.

I guess if you have people buying your books you can do whatever you want… and to be fair, I keep trying again. But I just wish that she would try something new.  I love how she writes characters and I love the moral issues she explores, but I knew from the first few pages how this was going to turn out, and I was right on the money.  That’s annoying to me.

Conclusion: If you haven’t read Jodi Picoult before, this probably isn’t the best, but it would be a good introduction into how she does it.