New Book Review!

Anyone who knows me knows I love Jodi Picoult novels.  Is it great literature?  Definitely not.  It is fluff, but somewhat educated fluff and she's written about some really interesting and sometimes controversial issues, which I enjoy.  She has become somewhat of a machine, in that she cranks these things out for publication exactly once a year in March, so I wonder how that has affected the quality of her process.  The previous book from 2010, House Rules, I guessed the ending of way in the beginning and was kind of disappointed with the story.  Note to Jodi:  please do not attempt to write a first person account from the mind of a teenage boy with Asperger's Syndrome ever again. 

The current book, Sing You Home, was better, thankfully.

 

This is the story of a woman who has struggled with infertility and infant loss.  She gets divorced from her husband and ends up in a new relationship with a woman, who she marries and wishes to start a family with, using her own frozen embryos.  The ex-husband, who has since become a born-again Christian, is opposed to letting his children grow up in an "immoral family" and takes her to court.  A fantastical story perhaps, but not 100% unrealistic these days.  NOTE:  If you have dealt with infertility, miscarriage, infant loss, etc. this could be a difficult book to get through.

Some thoughts:

1 - I like that she got back to writing mostly from the female POV.  They always say "write what you know" and obviously this what she knows.  I did not, however, think she wrote accurately as a lesbian.  I'd be curious to hear a lesbian's opinion, but for me it didn't seem realistic.  A good effort, but fell a little short.

2 - I thought the issues she raised were timely.  I hear on the news that Gay Rights are our generation's Civil Rights, so this story put a lot of the struggled of gay couples into perspective.

3 - some of the reviews on Amazon criticize that Jodi portrayed Christians in a very negative light.  I disagree.  I think she happened to make her villains members of a small group of Christians that exist in this country because it was necessary for making the court battle realistic and pointed.  She did, however, show how all people can change and ask for forgiveness and learn to do the right thing, which is, you know, kind of important to the whole Christianity thing. 

4 - I liked almost all of the characters, even the very flawed ones.  For me, I will not be invested in a book unless I like who I'm reading about.

5 - Jodi is known for her twisty endings, even down to the last page or last sentence sometimes.  I didn't find the ending to be a big twist, though I thought she could have put one in to take it in a different direction.  This was a satisfying ending overall.

6 - If you are a fan of Jodi in general and enjoy her books about issue and involving trials, you should enjoy this one.  It isn't quite as strong as say.....The Pact or My Sister's Keeper.....but solid.  7/10.

March Book Club Review

I recently joined a newly-formed book club started by a good friend I have known since elementary school.  I missed the first meeting but was able to attend this past weekend where we discussed Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Having a small child makes reading for pleasure difficult, especially when the book is quite dense, so I managed to only make it through the first chapter.  Sad.  I've always been a reader and not being able to make much time for it now is hard.  Knowing other members were probably in the same boat, my friend said she was going to read a synopsis and rent the movie, which I decided to do as well.  If I couldn't get through the text in time, at least I would be familiar with the story and could somewhat participate in the discussion.

The book & the movie::  The tiny amount that I read didn't really give me a good enough taste to have a real opinion of the book.  I found the first chapter to have a lot of detail that didn't seem necessary to the overall story, but the introduction of the "epic lovestory" was enough to make me interested in continuing to read.  When I ran out of time, I thought that I might enjoy picking the book back up at a later time and finishing.  After I watched the movie, I changed my mind.  I found the whole thing very self-indulgent.  The characters were not likable and the idea that these two people had been in love with each other for 50+ years seemed very silly.  It appeared that the reader/viewer was meant to sympathize with the two protagonists but no one in our group did.  They kept referring to Florentino as "the stalker guy," which I thought fit him perfectly.  The acting in the movie was pretty bad too, which I was surprised about since I normally like Javier Bardem.  He's even less attractive in this movie than in No Country for Old Men, which is hard considering the awful haircut.

Yikes!

Phew, much better!

3/10


Spark Notes:  I employed one of time-honored traditions of high-schoolers by reading the Cliffs Notes.  Except, instead of being little black and yellow booklets, you can read online via Sparknotes.com (though Cliffs Notes also have their own website now).  They were very informative and I probably got the more out of these than the book or movie!

It was nice to be part of the group and have an adult discussion, but we all agreed that in the future the hostess will choose something a little less arduous.