Title: My
Sister’s Keeper
Author: Jodi
Picoult
Publisher:
Allen & Unwin (First publisher Atria Books)
Publish
date: 2009 (First published 2004)
ISBN: 978 1
74175 805 4
Quite the
most compelling book I’ve read in a long time. The narrative is: a couple with
two small children have a designer baby when they find out their two year old
(Kate) has leukemia. The baby’s umbilical cord blood cells are the original
desired product, but things get out of hand. The struggle to balance family
life in the constant environment of imminent death and hospitals continues for
years. There are plot twists.
The novel’s
success is lodged firstly in the strength of Picoult’s clear-shorn writing,
adroit at tossing the reader straight into a situation by a look or a four-word
phrase. But more than that, and more surprisingly, it is through the energy the
characters are imbued with. I read this in paperback so I don’t have a word
count, but I’d place bets on the count for permutations of the word ‘death’
(dying, dead, deadly, died) being close to 100. The whole novel is firmly under
the constant shadow of When Will Kate Die. Considering this, it is even more
extraordinary that the main themes are actually life, and love. The phrase that kept popping into my mind
while reading was Marvel’s ‘tear our pleasures with rough strife/ through the
iron gates of life.’ The juxtaposition of how little time there is, with how
much one would theoretically want, is the same impetus that drives both pieces
on, with the same exuberant mix of wry humour and desperate bravado.
The ‘love’
aspect is a careful mirroring of almost every combination of characters. Kate
and her designer sister Anna, Sara the mother and Brian the father, the
physical similarity between the mother and the son Jesse, and between the
father and Kate (and later the similarity between Anna and Sara), the echo of
Kate and her also-terminally-ill boyfriend Taylor, and the romance between
Campbell the lawyer and Julia. This last is by far the weakest portrayal, which
I think is telling, because the ‘love’ the author is obsessing about is
extremely platonic, in its most basic form. The mirror opposite, the other
half, the twin, the necessary other to be complete. Talking of which, actually
the combo of Julia and her sister Izzy are possibly worse sketches, put there
purely, it seems to me, to draw the reader’s attention to this already
screaming duality theme. It really could be omitted altogether. The whole
Campbell side of things is weak, if amusing at times, and of course necessary
for the plot to go forward. Given that the book could probably be 1/3 shorter
with absolutely no detriment, it’s astonishing how powerful it is. This review
certainly does it no justice. Go forth and read. Four Moose Hoofs up out of
five.
