Books: My Sister’s Keeper

by Yen posted July 15, 2008 category My library

My Sister's KeeperMy Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I’ve taken forever to finish this book. I was attracted to the story of book with its interesting topic. It is a story about a family struggling with the fact that the eldest daughter, Kate, is diagnosed to have leukemia at an early age. Another child, Anna, is conceived, whereby her genes were engineered so that she can be the donor to her elder sister.

However, at the age of thirteen, Anna has soon had enough of the medical nightmare that she has gone through (since she was a baby) to help her ailing sister that she decides against the idea to donate one of her kidney to her. Without the kidney transplant, Kate will die. Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation, so that she can decide all future medical decisions for herself.

The author approaches the topic in an interesting way, by telling the story from the point of view of each main character from the book. Each chapter is unfolded in a way that the reader gets to see things from the perspective of Anna, her father (Brian), her mother (Sara), her brother (Jesse), the prosecuting lawyer for Anna (Campbell) and the guardian ad litem for Anna (Julia). There is however, none from Kate.

I guess for such a topic, it is rather an intelligent way to explore the feelings of each character involved in this family turmoil. Personally for me, I find it sort of confusing because my flow of interest and concentration for the story was paused by every change of character. Then I have to start all over again from the perspective of another character. This explains why I was able to put down the book by the end of each chapter. It didn’t leave me with the feeling of yearning to know what’s next.

It is not really an entertaining read for me because I couldn’t really connect with the characters of the book. Perhaps the story was told with too much details and too deep into each character and makes it sort of dragging on forever.

Want to know the ending? It is an end which I didn’t see coming. The author aptly puts it.

‘In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parent who loses a child.’

I’ll give it 2.5 out of 5.

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5 Responses to Books: My Sister’s Keeper

  1. Ee Chin on July 16, 2008

    I was actually planning to check out this book from the library, but I got lazy and eventually forgotten about it. Since the story explores the emotional perspectives of the main characters, which I’m not particularly fond of, I found my interest has flagged. Time to explore other books on the New York Times bestsellers list.

  2. Stardust on July 16, 2008

    Thanks for sharing, but quite disppointed to know that it is not an enticing read. I guess Kate died? Hmm…

  3. Dawn on July 18, 2008

    I brought the book along on my long flight/taxi ride home to M’sia (Ipoh). I didn’t expect the ending either but the characters did catch my attention. I know I cried buckets towards the end.

  4. Bee Ean on July 18, 2008

    The plot sounds interesting.

    Do you read German fiction books?

  5. KY on July 19, 2008

    Chin, it was only my opinion I wrote here. This book received rave reviews too. Don’t let my opinion dampens your interest :) .

    Stardust, I won’t spoil the suspense for you. Maybe you’ll find this book interesting and share with me your opinion ;) .

    Dawn, you’re from Ipoh? Nice to meet another Malaysian here :) . I was too emotionally detached towards the end of the book because I didn’t read it in one go. All I could think of was just to finally finish reading it :P .

    Bee Ean, I found the plot interesting too. I haven’t tried reading novels in German yet. Too intimidated by the language..LOL..maybe I’ll try someday ;) .

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