My Sister's Keeper - Book Review

The book My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult is a very interesting read. The story is told to us by the Fitzgerald family. The parents, Brian and Sarah have three children Jesse, Kate and Anna. When she was two, Kate was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia [APL]. In order to save their daughter's life, the parents received IVF treatments to conceive their second daughter so that she mould be a suitable donor for Kate. Now that Anna is thirteen, she is suing her parents to the rights to her own body.
               This story focuses on the family's mental structure and as we see the lawsuit take affect we experience the turmoil of a family beak down. Picoult is a very talented author and she uses this advantage to the best of her abilities. Instead of focusing on just one character throughout the book, she enables us to see what this family is going through by changing the perspective in each chapter and sometimes having a chapter about a specific year.
                During this book there were many different characters that appealed to me. Another one of Picoults talents is that she can make every character completely unique which gives us the feeling that we are spying on a struggling family which seems to be dealing with fresh heartbreak everyday, rather than just reading a book. I would have to say though that Sarah and Anna struck me as the strongest.
                I enjoyed watching Anna's character develop throughout the book and to see her deal with very difficult situations again and again which I doubt most adults would be able to do quite so well. As the youngest in the family, Anna has had to grow up faster than most children would and often times finds herself feeling out of place in her own household. As the youngest of three kids myself, I really felt throughout this book that I could relate to Anna which for me, made the story much more realistic and believable. She is smart, cunning and has been very independent from a young age. Also as the theme of this book is quite sad, Anna was able to take a situation that for most would be upsetting and make it more lighthearted with her quick wit and wicked sense of humour. The thing that probably struck me the most about Anna would have to be her wisdom. All through the book she was very mature for her age, and at some points had me forgetting that I wasn't reading about and adult but rather a thirteen year old girl.
                Sarah is the backbone of the Fitzgerald family, it is her that kept them going with her determination and strength. She is the mainly cares for her sick daughter Kate. She is probably the character which I admire the most. Throughout Kate's illness she has had to make almost impossible decisions, run the household and look after her other children. After reading this book and seeing the about of pain this woman has gone through to keep her family intact you have no choice but to look up to her. Other than caring for Kate she has had to rear two other children and keep her marriage afloat and up until the lawsuit she believed that they were doing okay. Now readers get to see her life spiralling out of her control while she struggles to hold everything together.
                Jesse is actually my favourite character from this book. Although there are many excellent people to choose from I found myself completely drawn to him. Jesse is the eldest of the family and often gets overlooked by Kate's and Anna's medical stints. An example of this was when he was ten, Kate fell ill and Sarah was not able to bring Jesse to the orthodontist and to get cleats that he needed to tryout for his schools soccer team. As a result of this Jesse got a fork from the kitchen and pulled his braces from his mouth, before announcing to his mother that now she wouldn't have to bring him anywhere. Throughout this book although it was Kate and Anna that had to stay in hospital most of the time, I always found myself sympathising with Jesse as well. Because of his parents distractions it isn't long before he begins to lose his way. As the book goes on we begin to realise that his parents have lost almost all faith in him. An example of this is when Sarah finds a bruise on his arm she immediately suspects drugs but in fact he has just given blood to the hospital because he feels that he isn't helping enough with Kate because he isn't a blood match. I very much enjoyed reading from Jesse's point of view as we see that he wasn't a bad person and just can't find a way to express his love for his sisters.
                 Imagery is very strong in this book. Throughout the novel Picoult describes Kate illnesses extremely well giving us an insight to a life of a young girl going through the difficult throws of Leukaemia. This was often times sad but made the story very believable. I really liked this because I wouldn't have that much knowledge of cancer symptoms and this made the story much more worth while for me. Imagery also helped us with the dynamics of hospitals. We saw how the doctors were always busy while the nurses were the ones that got to know the patients really well and often got very close to them.
                There are many themes seen throughout this book. Just some of these were: illness, love, law, and death. The one the stood out the most to me was illness. The whole book focuses on Kate's cancer and her attempt to live with it. I was really interested in this theme and was not disappointed by the information in this story. Love was shown clearly as well because of how the family stuck together through all the hard times and whatever obsticles they faced.
                This book is one of my all time favourites and I would recommend it to anyone. Even for people who have already seen the movie, the book is in my opinion not only better but also very different. One part of the book that really surprized me was the shock twist at the end, as I was not expecting it at all. The imagery was brilliant, the characters were well thought out and the themes and plots were well executed. I for one cannot find one thing that I didn't like about this book. This is a must read, so grap your copy, sit back and enjoy.