Well another book club has come and gone.  This time our book was My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult.  Now, I have read other books by Picoult, so I felt I knew what to expect.  I was not disappointed.

Ms. Picoult is an expert on creating a fascinating story.  The bare bones of her novels never disappoint.  The stories she creates are always compelling and My Sister’s Keeper was no exception.  In this novel, Picoult brings the reader a fascinating story of a family in turmoil as a daughter struggles with a rare form of lukehemia.  What makes it fascinating though, is not the character’s, Kate’s, fight against this disease, but her sister’s (Anna’s) fight for independence.  The real crux of the story is that Anna was conceived to be a genetically perfect match for her sister, thus providing Kate with the blood, tissues, etc. she would need to conquer her illness.

Picoult masterfully weaves the stories of all the characters in what is, at times, a heart wrenching novel.  We see the story from the perspective of each family member, with the exception of Kate, and even the perspectives of Anna’s attorney in her fight for medical emancipation and a court appointed guardian.  The story complicates itself at some points by involving the latter two, whom are not only involved with this terribly intricate court case, but were involved with each other as teenagers.  Apparently their’s was a true love that did not fade with the passing of 15 years since they’ve been apart.  While the perspecitives of these two is interesting since it provides an outsiders view into the world of this dysfunctional family, it is overly emotional as each flashback to their teenage romance.

The main story telling device of this novel is the first person perspective.  While this is a useful and intimate narration, Picolout pulls out one of her tricks by having nearly half of each character’s chapter be a flashback to some emotionally telling exeperience.  At times these flashbacks are revealing of a character’s motivations, and at others this is an overly cheesy way to pull at the reader’s heartstrings.  As typical for Picolout the narrations swing between fascinating, fast moving story telling, and overly emotional, hit you over the head symbolism, drivel.

I did enjoy this novel for it’s interesting story, but as usual I was disappointed by Picoult’s overly obvious literary devices and cheesy romances.  As a law geek I loved the court aspect of this novel! Yet as an overly sympathetic reader, I couldn’t see this from every perspective, only the moral incorrectness of it.  To cap it all off with, the ending is somewhat of a doozie and I will leave that to you, dear reader, to determine if you like it or.  As for this reader, I felt a myriad of emotions only truly evoked when a story has touched my heart, as cheesy as that is.