Book review - My Sister's Keeper

How do you define a *good book*? Is it one that moves you? Something you would read over and over again? One that addresses hard hitting topics? Maybe a good narrator? Character growth? Plausibility? I can easily see why My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult became the uber-blockbuster it is...but there's something about it that holds me back.

Short synopsis, Anna Fitzgerald was conceived so her cord blood could be used to try and cure her sister Kate of an aggressive form of leukaemia. When it didn't work, she became blood and then bone marrow donor. After many years of aggressive therapy and brushes with death, Kate is diagnosed with renal failure her parents want her to donate a kidney but Anna instead sues her parents for medical emancipation.

In the words of the judge ruling the case, the book is about the sanctity of life versus the quality of life. The book raises some pretty good issues - what would you do in order to save a life? Would you do it even if it impinged on the livelihood of someone else? Can a decision made in love be bad thing? Is a life lived in pain better than not living? The weakness of this is that while it gets you thinking, the book does not answer any of these things. In fact, the whole issue is solved by deus ex machina that while closing everything cleanly and uncontroversially, it made me feel a little manipulated.

The manipulation works though. The book is written in first person monologue and I will admit to bawling a bit at various points due to the characters' conflicts. However, there are seven different narrators but they pretty much all sound the same, just separated by font. Everyone is incredibly eloquent. Not that that's a bad thing, but when the people range from 12yo girl, 17yo boy, various adults and everyone is essentially the same, they just blend into each other. Some of the fonts are nice though. I do like a good font.

Emotionally moved as I may be, my feeling at the end was not to read it again as I would for other wrenching books such as The Summer Garden or L'Assommoir (oh, such suffering there!). Everyone just seems to be reliving their own suffering or feeling other peoples and it's just a maudlin-fest. I mean sure, the last few chapters of L'Assommoir is a maudlin-fest but Zola's message was alcohol and poverty are bad and need to be fixed! Because of the deus ex machina, the only real message is medical ethics is difficult.

While my review seems overwhelmingly negative, I would recommend it to others. I did manage to finish the book in two days despite many others I could have picked up. And I certainly don't believe it belongs in the 'burn pile' with The DaVinci Code, any Jackie Collins, or The Devil Wears Prada.