(Originally Written for a grade 12 English class)

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult is an extraordinary novel filled with emotion, vivid characters and heartbreak. Since first reading the book, I have reread and recommended it many times. True to her style, Picoult explores a moral dilemma in this book, and puts a human face on it. Kate, a young girl, is dying of leukemia, and desperately needs stem cells. Her parents, Brian and Sara decide to conceive a child, Anna, as a genetic match for Kate. They love Anna as a daughter, but also rely on her as a supply of bone marrow, blood transfusions, and much more for Kate. As Anna says, “Nearly every time Kate’s hospitalized, I wind up there too” (pg. 10). Her first function was to give Kate her umbilical cord blood. The book opens with Anna, twelve years old, going to a lawyer and announcing that she wants to be medically emancipated from her parents; she does not want to donate a kidney to Kate. The reasons for this decision are only partially revealed until well into the novel as everyone in the book, including Anna, struggles with this latest development. Will Anna really let her sister die without the kidney? And isn’t it her right to refuse? The characters and plot in My Sister’s Keeper are especially well defined, leaving the reader with more questions than answers, and a feeling of having gotten to know the people in the book.
Each and every character in My Sister’s Keeper is a fully realized individual with tangible emotions and understandable reactions. Admirably, Jodi Picoult has managed to write believable, relatable characters, and their actions and words are natural, instead of seemingly contrived as plot devices. From the ragged grief and guilt of Sara, Kate’s mother, to the cynical disregard of Campbell Alexander, the jaded lawyer, all the characters are three dimensional and utterly real to the reader. It takes a significant amount of skill on the part of the author to create a world and fill it with characters that do not fall flat. Picoult moves the plot along seemingly without effort, and lets the characters be true to themselves. Anna, Kate’s younger sister opens the book with her narration, and hers is the first story we hear, but, as with real life, not all is revealed, and minds can be changed. Anna is an intensely real girl, whose thoughts and opinions draw the reader in from page one, until the end. Picoult is a master of character, and effectively changes narrators often through the book to allow for all sides to be seen. We hear from Anna and Kate’s older brother, Jesse, who loves his sisters deeply, and watching them suffer when he can do nothing causes him to seek out situations he can control, and leads him to arson and alcohol. We read the perspectives of both Brian and Sara, showing us two very different ways of dealing with the grief and guilt this situation would put on the parents. They want to save Kate, but is it too much for them to ask of Anna? There are other narrators, though, than just those of the family. Campbell Alexander, the lawyer Anna goes to, has his own views, and his own life to deal with. As does Julia the guardium at litem assigned to ensure that Anna is not pressured at home. One would think that a novel with so many narrators, all written by the same author, would have blurry lines between personalities, but Picoult manages to give each person their own unique voice, and to give us, the readers, many different angles to the same story. An aspect of the characters to be praised is that they don’t always do and say the right thing. So many books are filled with characters who only do good, always have the best intentions, and don’t make mistakes. In this novel, there are regrets, and losses. Each character is completely relatable. Sara is obviously desperate and cracking apart with the strain of trying to stay together. Anna barely know what she is doing or why. Kate is simply full of love, without time enough to express it. The heartbreaking conclusion, as well as many other points in this book, has the ability to make the reader break down into sobs. The ability to persuade a reader to care so deeply about a fictional character that events in the character’s life can bring them to tears is, to me, the mark of an incredible author.
Throughout My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult weaves a plot that is speculative without being boring and realistic without being predictable. Through the whole book, there was not one time during which I wanted to put it down. The plot centers, as many Picoult books do, around a court case, but also on the family of Kate. We see each character try to deal with what Anna is trying to tell them. Picoult keeps all events realistic. They are things that could happen to anyone, and that keeps us riveted, in fascinated horror to this often tragic tale. The variety of dynamics between the characters makes for an amazing story, and the whole time, the reader is trying to decide whose side they should be on, and whether there are sides at all. The amazing thing about a moral dilemma like this one is that Picoult gives all viewpoints without giving a preference. It is an impossible situation for anyone to be in. How would you react watching your child die? Watching your parents fall apart? Could you force a young girl to give up an organ? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t at least try? What would you do in their place? And the answer is simple for every reader: you would not want to be there. Nobody ever wants to have to deal with the situations and issues that face the characters in this novel, and so it never gets dull. This is one of the most fascinating books I have read. Another reason the plot of this story never gets old is that Picoult does not simply go over and over the same issue. We are given flashbacks and insight into many different times in the lives of Kate’s family. We are there when Brian and Sara first take Kate to the hospital, when they decide to conceive Anna, and for many other times, when Kate is sick, in love, and in remission. These flashbacks provide a history that helps the reader understand the current situation better. A subplot that adds so much to this story is between Campbell and Julia, the only characters outside of Kate’s family who narrate. Picoult gives the reader clues, and then flashbacks into their past, and tantalizes with hints that Campbell has a secret no one else knows (except maybe a certain dog… interested?). There is also a plot twist, a major plot twist, which leaves the reader reeling (more than they were already reeling) with shock. Nothing more about that twist can be mentioned, but it should be said that it only makes the book more phenomenal. The plot of this book manages to keep the reader not only interested, but utterly immersed through the book, and their involvement with the emotions of the characters only grows with each chapter.
My Sister’s Keeper is an amazing novel filled with raw emotion, both pain and joy. It is a book that makes the reader think, not only as an observer, but as a participant. With richly rendered characters and a plot that neither rushes nor lags, it is a book that readers from middle school to nursing homes can identify with. It speaks of love and family, and just how far a person will go to keep those things. It also speaks of heartbreak, loss, grief and illness. Each paragraph is filled with meaning, and each character human enough to love. This book is fantastic and tragic. It is a story that everyone should read. ( )

2006

if you seen the movie, I say read the book. it's the same but not as much as you think it is.

I knew of this book for a while ow, but i didn't know what's it was all about, but of course, I ended up letting it piled up in my TBRs for the longest time. Until the movie came....

I have a soft spot in anything that's being regard as a "spare part child". It has become an itch, or a peeve if you may, an issue this book has managed to portray.

I found myself trying to read it through whenever I could. This book comprised of first hand experience from all of the characters involved. The book centered on Anna, the specially engineered child by their parents, to be the sole donor for her older sister Kate, who is suffering from a rare kind of Leukemia. One day, she just suddenly said she had enough and decided to court to apply for Medical emancipation from her parents.

Personally this book is an emotional read for me. I got so absorbed in it, and I found myself feeling sorry for Anna through out the book. Regardless screaming somebody die already because i wanted to finish the book asap too lol. ( )

A sisters Friendship to fight through cancer. A suspenceful love story that will leave you with shock. ( )

Jodi Picoult’s book My Sister’s Keeper describes the struggle of a 13-year old girl, Anna Fitzgerald who was conceived by her parents to be a genetic match to her older sister Kate, who has leukemia. Anna undergoes many blood transfusions and bone marrow operations for her sister, but when her parents ask her to give a kidney, she breaks down and tries to find help from an attorney to give her medical freedom. This sounds like a terrible thing for Anna to do at a time when her older sister needs her the most, but since select chapters of the book are told in Anna’s point of view, the reader can see how hard it is for a young girl to give up everything for someone else. Like many of Picoult’s books this one is very controversial because it questions the ethical decision making of the parents. Is it moral to have a second child to save one’s first child? Even though Anna loves her sister very much she still feels that “nobody ever asked” and that she cannot go through with the surgery. Soon after winning her case and gaining the opportunity to make her own medical decisions, Anna gets killed in a car accident and her kidneys are given to Kate. This huge twist in the ending is completely unexpected and shows the reader that Anna was truly born to be a sacrifice for her sister.