My Sister’s Keeper - Jodi Picoult
I have no idea really where to start. I did not like this book, but I can’t outright name a single thing I found wrong with it, and somehow, I was unable to put it down.
Much like The Time Traveler’s Wife, My Sister’s Keeper is written through split narrative. But not just two voices; this novel features a total of 7. That’s right. 7. And none much different from the other. Had it not been for the name to remind me whose perspective I was receiving, I would have assumed that it was all the same voice. In Niffenegger’s novel, whether she identified each voice or not, I still would have been able to tell the difference. Perhaps Picoult has something to learn here.
Linking into this, I didn’t find myself particularly drawn in to any of the characters. I could not imagine any of them as real people. Perhaps this is because their narrative voices are so similar, and since it was so difficult to identify WHO a character was in the first place, it was virtually impossible to identify WITH them as a consequence of that. But perhaps that’s the point. The subject matter of a novel like this is so difficult, that perhaps Picoult intended to maintain a distance between her characters and her readers, to make it easier for them. But even so, I found the characters to be weakly developed. The plot took predictable turn after predictable turn. Nothing about it surprised me. Campbell, the lawyer who seemed so inhuman at the beginning gradually softens and, inevitably, becomes an enormously likeable character. Jesse, the rebel throughout, reforms as an afterthought in the epilogue and joins the police. Kate recovers. Anna dies.
Strangely, it was not the main plot, the story of the family and of Kate’s battle against cancer that held what little interest I maintained throughout this novel. It was the subplot surrounding the lesser characters, of Campbell and Julia, and to an extent Jesse for different reasons, their characters and their relationship, that pushed me forward and “compelled” (if that’s what you’d call it…) me to continue reading. While the “happily ever after” that Campbell and Julia are granted is somewhat trite, it seems nice that in a novel so riddled with tragedy, at least two of the characters should find some happiness. Jesse’s compulsive rebellion, his criminal behaviour and so on, made me pity him; the boy whose sisters constantly stole parental focus, who felt as though he didn’t exist, who would do anything to be noticed. His choice in activity to achieve this was vaguely amusing and was mindless in the same sort of way Bateman’s actions in American Psycho are, but unlike Ellis’s (awful) novel, Jesse’s (albeit weak) characterisation is not lacking heart or morality. He comes to repent for his sins and turn his life around, another minor happiness that makes the tone at the end of the novel more balanced.
If I had to describe this novel in a single word, I would go for “cathartic”. All the way through, the prevalent thought in my mind was “Thank God I have never had to go through this”, and also hoping with all my might that I never have to. It even went so far as texting my boyfriend making him promise he will never die for as long as we’re together.
The Telegraph wrote of this novel “This is Picoult’s greatest strength; her ability to inhabit other people’s feelings, relishing the bits that are complex and contradictory… She is a master of her craft… and humanity is what Picoult does best”. If Picoult had truly achieved this, I feel that I would have felt more sympathy, even empathy, with the situation at hand. I would have felt as though these were people I could relate to. As it stands, I felt distanced from them, whether this were deliberate or not, and all I experienced as a result of reading this novel was mild annoyance and immense catharsis. It is almost as though the Telegraph read a different novel to the one I did. Or perhaps I’m just cold…?
Picoult, Jodi [2004] My Sister’s Keeper (2008) London: Hodder and Stoughton
