AUTHOR: Jodi PicoultTITLE: Handle with Care PUBLISHER: Atria496 Pages
Jodi Picoult has been steadily releasing books, nearly annually, since 1992. Picoult has said that, for her, the creation of a novel is much like the development of a baby in that it takes nine months.
For the many authors who release books quickly, it can be said that oftentimes the hastiness of finishing the novel detracts from the quality of the work. However, Picoult's 16th novel, Handle with Care, is no less poignant than her others.
Although many of her previous novels have been bestsellers, Picoult's fame skyrocketed with her 2003 novel, My Sister's Keeper. It has managed to remain in the public eye more so than her other novels because it has been adapted to a film (which will be released this summer) including such actors as Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin and Abigail Breslin.
Picoult's novels juggle issues such as a school shooting, a mercy killing, sexual abuse, a suicide pact and the appearance of stigmata. However, with nearly every novel focusing on different controversial issues that make the headlines daily, they each share a common thread. When it comes down to it, Picoult's novels are about relationships between people, and that is what primarily makes Picoult's novels so gripping.
As she does in her other novels, Picoult weaves the tale in Handle With Care with the use of multiple points of view. Each chapter takes on a different voice, molding to the central characters' thoughts. However, unlike her other novels, each voice speaks in the second person, addressing "you." The "you" to which each narrator refers is Willow O'Keefe.
Willow O'Keefe is not a normal five-year-old child; she is exceedingly smart and can spit out facts as if she were constantly reading from Wikipedia (a characteristic that leads her sister, Amelia, to nickname her "Wiki"). She also has Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI).
OI, also called Brittle Bone, is a disease in which bones lack enough collagen so that something as simple as a sneeze can cause them to fracture. Willow is born with Type II OI, which, while not fatal, is incredibly debilitating.
Even before she was born, Willow had seven fractures. Other than the telltale casts that often cover her body, she is also of short stature; several times in the novel, she gets mistaken for a three-year-old.
Taking care of Willow proves to be both financially and emotionally a burden that continually places stress on the O'Keefe family. After a visit with lawyers over another matter, Willow's mother, Charlotte, does the only thing she can think of - she files a malpractice lawsuit against the obstetrician for not telling her of Willow's condition. However, the ob/gyn who she sues also happens to be her best friend.
The conflict of the novel rests upon this lawsuit, but by no means is this a typical courtroom drama. For Charlotte to win the lawsuit and collect a large payout, she has to place all the blame on her best friend, and thus, potentially destroy that relationship.
Even worse, though, is what she has to say in court that if she had known that Willow would have been born with OI, she would have terminated the pregnancy. These are statements that the media, her family, her friends and, ultimately, Willow, will hear.
Like many of Picoult's novels, Change of Heart takes a controversial topic (in this case, a wrongful birth lawsuit) and wraps it around the intricacies of a family, examining the repercussions it can have. She does so with grace. With each chapter, the shifting narrators offer deeper insight that both evokes empathy from the reader, as well as the intended confusion.
Oftentimes, it is hard to discern characters' true motives, even though the reader has the opportunity to be inside their head. This is not a flaw of the novel, but a strength. It only adds to the complexity of a situation where nothing presented can be black and white.
Throughout the course of the novel, the lawsuit challenges the strength of many different relationships: those between friends, sisters, husbands and wives, doctors and patients, and mothers and daughters.
Change of Heart is one of Picoult's more remarkable recent novels. Although the subject matter is by no means light-hearted, the novel is not too dense to sift through. Picoult leaves the plot unresolved until the very end.
As with many of her novels, the ending will leave the reader staring at the final pages in disbelief. If anything, readers will finish Change of Heart with a better understanding of OI.
However, it would not be surprising if readers found themselves returning to Picoult's previous works, anticipating Picoult's signature style in her other novels of families, relationships and the bonds that make them.
