My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Posted on May 27, 2009 
Filed under Books, Fiction

my sisters keeper lg My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Here is my new review of a recently read book called My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. It’s the fictional story of Anna, a thirteen year old who was genetically engineered and conceived to be a perfectly matched bone marrow donor for her sister Kate who has leukemia. Anna is not ill but she has had countless procedures and each time that Kate is sick Anna must give until one day she walks in to a lawyer’s office and asks to sue her parents for the rights to her own body. The book starts with the line, ‘In my first memory, I am three years old and I am trying to kill my sister’.

The story is told from the points of view of the people involved; Anna, her parents, brother, lawyer, court appointed guardian and her sister. It raises so many moral and ethical questions and decisions I could never imagine having to face in reality. Most people have felt the intensity of a love so strong for someone that it would make you jump in front of a train to save them, especially a parent for a child, but would you push someone in front of that train if you knew that the impact would not kill them but could possibly save the other… if the damage wasn’t going to be too bad… would it ever be OK? Do you have the right to make those decisions on behalf of someone else? Would you do the same thing in the same position? Is it OK to say ‘enough’ when you know the outcome of your decision will allow someone you love to die? Would that be selfish?

It is hard to imagine the knock on effect of having a seriously ill child. It affects everybody in the family. Parents are sometimes put in the position of deciding if it is OK to take from one child to keep the other alive. Some put themselves in that position by choosing to have a ‘donor’ child. And are the missed games, holidays, camps, birthdays and Christmases any less important for other siblings who are not sick? Does it make that child’s needs unworthy because those needs seem trivial in comparison? A missed birthday party pales into insignificance next to a rushed trip to the hospital because something else is failing in your poor sick child’s body, but does that make the importance of those missed games and birthdays etc any less valid for the ‘well’ children? How would this affect them? And for the donor child; each episode of poor health for their sick sibling means yet another procedure or donation from them. Would they feel proud and want to do it, or would they resent the life they are missing? What if it started before you were too young to make your own decisions or understand what was happening? With Anna, her first of many donations, and the least invasive, is her cord blood. Do parents have the right, or do they have a duty, to do whatever they can to save a dying child?

Amazon.com Widgets

The book is well written and reading the varying viewpoints makes for a good story. The only real fault lies with a love story that seems to have been thrown in for no particular reason which I found slightly annoying and is obviously meant for the ‘chick lit’ readers. Other than that it is an engaging story which has you questioning what is right and wrong, or even if there is a right or wrong, and so very glad that you are not in that position. I found it a bit of a page turner and at times felt anger, sadness and compassion toward each character, sometimes swapping from one emotion back to another. I guess it’s very much a case of ‘don’t judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes’ and in this story you get try on everyone’s shoes.

And now the long awaited feature film is set to debut 26 June 2009 starring Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Rick Crawford, Jason Patric and directed by Nick Cassavetes.

It’s a pity that the music on the trailer makes it sound totally like a chick flick. This book, and hopefully the movie, touches on such deep ethical and moral boundaries, I feel it would have crossover appeal for both men and women. I’ll review the movie when it is released. I hope they do the book justice. It was fabulous reading and very thought provoking.

CJ


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Comments



3 Responses to “My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult”

  1.  Jo on May 27th, 2009 10:04 pm

    This sounds sad. What an awful situation. I’ve heard of this through people who love Jodi Picoult fans. She has a huge following. I may give this one a look before the movie comes out.

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  3.  sts on June 20th, 2010 8:30 am

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