My Sister's Keeper

Customer Reviews

• 1 out of 5
  
  
  by Lindsay from Belmont, MA | Aug 15, 2007
  

  Have you ever read a book that really pissed you off? Pissed you off so much all you could do was rant about it until everyone told you to just shut up? This is that book for me.
  Picoult's dialogue is excellent, but her characters annoy me and the ending of this book was such a cop-out I almost wrote her an angry letter about it, but decided against it, as she'd never read it anyway.
  Basically, "My Sister's Keeper" is about a family with three kids - I forget their real names, so I'm giving them fake ones: Token Boy Child, Leukemia, and Spare Parts. Mom and Dad find out about Leukemia's unfortunate diagnosis when she's just two, so they decide to have another baby - not to replace Leukemia when she inevitably bites it, but to provide Leukemia with spare parts for organ transplants. Spare Parts gets tired of being held back by her sister's needs - and in turn, Leukemia gets tired of holding her sister back; Spare Parts isn't allowed to go to overnight camp and is being forced to quit playing her favorite sport because Leukemia needs a new kidney. Spare Parts goes to a lawyer in an attempt to get medical emancipation from her parents. She winds up winning it, but dies in a car crash. Mom pulls the plug immediately, Leukemia gets a new kidney, and - even better - Leukemia is magically cured of her illness altogether. Also, there was a stupid subplot about the lawyer and social worker falling in love.
  The mother character annoyed me the most here; she didn't love her daughters equally, and it showed. It really showed. She loved Leukemia the way you love a child. She loved Spare Parts the way you love that child's trust fund or college savings. She played favorites and made no attempt to hide it.
  This whole book infuriated me - the very idea of having another kid just so your sick child can have her own personal organ bank sickens me. It really does. You're supposed to have a child because you will love that child, not to fill the needs of another child.

  
  
   191 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 2 out of 5
  
  
  by Lisa from Andover, CT | May 28, 2007
  

  As I said before: I'm still reading this book but I'm not sure why. My mom lent me the book and she loved it, everyone tells me they loved it and I'm sort of hating it while I read. I just want to finish it and move on. Maybe I'll change my tune when it's over.
  
  Well... I hate it less, but I'm still not in love with it. I think I know the problem, though. It's Jodi Picoult. My mom loves her, my sister loves her, everyone I know loves her and I can't stand her. She just writes in this odd way that gets on my nerves. What drove me nuts reading this one was the way that every chapter, almost every paragraph either ended with some sort of cliché or some profound statement that was supposed to be so meaningful.
  
  She made not so subtle comparisons to the stars and the lonely people on earth, to a fire and a disease, a firefighter and a mother who wants to save her dying daughter. Gag. I couldn't take it. But I know it's just me and that other people are going to love this story.
  
  I thought I knew how it was going to end but when it ended differently that I expected, my thought was "Oh yeah, I should have figured that one out. Much sappier than my prediction."
  
  It's terrible, my Picoult-aversion. I have the same feelings toward Alice Hoffman and Anita Shreve. I once found an Anita Shreve book in the basement of the house I moved into, crammed under the oil tank. Never one to pass up a book, I gave it a read, got two chapters in and wanted to throw it back under the oil tank myself. I think these authors try too hard and that's what irritates me.
  
  But don't let me stop you. Go ahead, swallow your sentimental nausea, put on your cliché repellant and I'm sure you'll enjoy the story of a family in turmoil, told in the fashion I usually enjoy where each chapter is from a different character's perspective. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
  

  
  
   94 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 1 out of 5
  
  
  by Lobeck from Portland, OR | Jun 22, 2007
  

  this book is a shameless and unskillful manipulation of human emotions. i felt dirty when i was done with it. the story is on par with cheap natural disaster movies like deep impact that are formulated to tug at your heartstrings in very predictable ways. the author painfully over uses the dramatic blackout technique where she writes a line that's trying too hard to be clever or profound and then fades to black - aka, leaves extra space before the next paragraph or ends a chapter - sometimes with no time break between one sentence and the next. such a cheap trick - does this impress anyone any more?
  
  the author writes the entire novel as a cliff hanger - another piece of shameless manipulation that i despise - with the whole novel spanning no more than a few days. she builds up plot points that don't deliver; when she finally reveals characters' motivations, they end up being pretty lame justifications for their actions.
  
  the sideline love story was completely predictable - old sweathearts with a bad breakup who are suddenly thrown into a situation together. woman resists, man persists, woman gives in to romantic evenings and sex, illustrating once again that women don't really know what they want and no doesn't really mean no and if you push hard enough you can have your way with any woman.
  
  needless to say, i don't recommend this book.

  
  
   63 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 5 out of 5
  
  
  by Sammy from The United States | May 29, 2007
  

  This book was stunning. In writing, in style, in plot, in character! It truly is one of those books that you really can't stop reading. Especially for me, because in a way it took me back to my Lurlene McDaniel days. Did anyone ever read her? She was always writing books about different teenagers and young children with terminal illnesses. I was addicted to those books. So it was no surprise when the young reader in me sort of jumped up when I saw a friend of mine reading this book and she described it to me.
  
  Boy was it a book well chosen. Picoult writes from the views of a few different key characters, allowing the reader to get an extremely well-rounded look at the story. At first the jumping from character to character is a little jarring and you have to keep reminding yourself that it's a new character, but eventually you get into the vibe of the book and wouldn't have it written any other way. The one thing Picoult does perfectly is make you torn. You really don't know who to support in a case like this. At times you find yourself leaning towards Anna, and other times wanting desperately to shout your support for Sara, the poor mother in this situation.
  
  With the readers information of other characters points of views and knowledge, the whole case is a lot more difficult to have a desired verdict towards. In the end a decision is made, a decision that, while reading the book, I was constantly wondering what Picoult was going to do, because either way one fully supported side was going to lose. But the way she really ends the book puts results to rest in a solid, yet emotionally unsatisfying ending. The ending it by no means bad, quite the contrary it was beautiful and settling, but at the same time you don't know whether to be relieved that there was an extremely closed ending without debate, or to cry. I won't tell you why, and I may have said too much already. But this book is just incredible and I highly advise you try to read it as soon as possible.

  
  
   31 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Nola from Pottsville, PA | Mar 22, 2008
  

  I hate novels where parenting is questioned, simply because I too often find myself thinking, “Well I would never do THAT.” I then have to do the whole knock-on-wood routine and hope that I didn’t just invite divine retribution for being too judgmental. So it was with Jodi Picoult’s novel My Sister’s Keeper. After reading the summary of the novel, I knew that I would never make the choices that the parents shown did. After reading the novel, I found myself questioning what I might really do if my child was facing death.
  
  In case you missed the summary, My Sister’s Keeper is the story of Anna, a thirteen year old girl genetically conceived to be a match for her leukemia-positive sister. Within minutes of her birth, she was a donor for Kate, sharing her cord blood to save her sister’s life. By the time she is thirteen, when the novel takes place, she has been in the hospital almost as much as Kate, donating things such as blood and bone marrow. After being asked to donate a kidney, she seeks legal emancipation from her parents. And so the story begins.
  
  One of the things that bugged me was the chapter-by-chapter switch of the point of view. It was very well handled and, once I got past the irritation stage, I had to admit that it helped the story along. And so we skip through the minds of Anna, her lawyer, her court-appointed guardian ad litem, her brother, her father, and her mother – in short, everyone close to Anna except her sister. Each of these perspectives is given in the present, with the notable exception of her mother. Instead, we trace the mother’s path of learning that her daughter has leukemia, and what decisions led her (and Anna) to the current moment. This, too, was initially annoying, but proved well-chosen; I’m not sure the same impact would have been made if we simply had the mom looking back. It would have been far easier to judge her at that point than it was to see her experiencing her pain.
  
  In fact, it was from Sara’s perspective that I learned the most, and that I questioned myself. If my young daughter, the light of my life, was threatened with death, how far would I go to save her? I don’t think that I honestly would have even thought up the idea of conceiving a child specifically for that purpose, but what do you do once the idea has been planted? Furthermore, it is clear that Sara loves and cherishes Anna, even as she worries incessantly over Katie. True, she neglects her, but she also neglects her son, who had been born prior to the diagnosis, turning most of her attention to her sick child. And though this also made me pass judgement, it also made me wonder – would I be able to balance my attention on all my children if one were struggling through a life-long illness? How easy would it be to make small decisions that hurt the others to save the one?
  
  In short, I hated this well-written, well-developed, well-plotted book because it made me think. The moral and religious side of me rejects the notion of a test-tube baby conceived for a specific purpose, but the mother in me wonders. If my child were starving, how easy would it be to remain true to my moral perspectives and not steal (assuming, of course, the government weren’t around to save me)? If someone threatened my child, how far would I go to protect them? In short, when it comes down to crunch time, how true would I stay?
  
  To fall asleep, I have to assure myself that I would, of course, be perfect in all things. And then knock soundly on the nearest wood, and pray I never have to find out.
  

  
  
   38 people found this review helpful
  
  

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