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MY SISTER'S KEEPER
by Jodi Picoult
Hodder and Stoughton, January 2005
448 pages
6.99GBP
ISBN: 034083546X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jodi Picoult's topic of concentration, as any faithful reader knows, is love and various aspects of it. Family relationships are important to her as the subject of this newest novel exemplifies. In the hands of a less sensitive writer, the topic might devolve into a genre perhaps best typified by that classic, A Fruity Melodrama (I would hasten to add that I am a devotee of that old comic masterpiece). But in Picoult's hands there is never a chance that the story might be anything less than a minute examination of an all too possible scenario in a modern family.

Much has been written and is still being written, about the morality of conceiving a child simply because that child may be the convenient spare parts storage for an older and less healthy sibling. Brian and Sara Fitzgerald have two children, Jesse and Kate. Kate develops a rare kind of leukemia. Her older brother Jesse is not compatible to provide cells for her so Brian and Sara decide to have another child by way of artificial selection.

A suitable embryo is implanted and eventually Anna is born. Her very first donation to her sister comes at the moment of her birth -- her umbilicus can provide precious stem cells for the cancer sufferer.

Although Anna was originally conceived with the sole purpose of providing stem cells, when the first treatment ultimately proves ineffectual more and more demands are made of the girl until, when Anna is 13, Kate is doomed unless she is given a kidney -- something which only her sister can supply.

Anna has read about the exploits of lawyer Campbell Alexander in the popular press. She determines that he is the legal practitioner for her and even sells her most valuable possession in order to accumulate a retainer for his services -- one which, fortunately, is not required as his pro bono work is currently short of what is necessary.

Campbell owns what he describes as a service dog, whose name is Judge. Whenever anyone enquires as to the service Judge provides, Campbell has a quick (and entirely false) rejoinder. My favourite is '"I'm a lawyer," I say, and I grin at her "He chases ambulances for me."' When Campbell is persuaded to take Anna seriously, the two embark on a battle which tears apart each participant in it, from the members of Anna's family through to Campbell, Julia, the Guardian Ad Litem, and the judge himself.

Picoult thoughtfully provides dilemmas for almost every character in her book. She clearly paints the wrenching love Anna's parents have for each of their children; Campbell and Julia should never have been in a professional relationship given an earlier disastrous personal relationship and poor Jesse, Anna's brother, is on a calamitous, self-destructive path.

The main problem, the ethics of bearing a child for the sole purpose of sustaining the life of another, is a thorny ethical issue and one without an apparent resolution. How the author composes the fictional denouement is, I suppose, about the only way it could be done and not render the remainder of the book bathetic.

To say the narrative, told from a variety of the points of view of the various actors in the drama, is powerful would be an understatement. I can only wonder how Picoult can possibly come up, in future work, with anything to equal this very moving and gripping tale.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, March 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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