My sisters Keeper- Book review

First quarter Outside reading book review
My sisters Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Washington Square Press, 2004.
Genre- Realistic Fiction (Novel)

My sister’s Keeper tells the story of a genetically designed child, Named Anna, who is created for the purpose of helping save her sister Kate, who has acute promyelocytic leukemia. Anna and Kate live with their parents, Brian and Sara, and their rebellious older brother Jesse, in Providence, Rhode Island. Kate was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 2, and is presently 16, while Anna is 13. The children lived a very abnormal childhood because of Kate’s serious illness and this affected them as they got older. They couldn’t have friends over, and couldn’t commit to anything because no one knew when Kate would relapse, or need a trip to the hospital. Anna and Jesse sometimes felt as if all the attention was always towards Kate. Anna begins to question who she really is, and if she was only brought into this world to help the survival of another child. When her parents ‘designed’ her, the doctors were able to hook up the fathers sperm to the mother’s egg and design a perfect donor match for Kate. So, Anna donates parts of her body to Kate (such as blood, marrow, etc.) However, Anna decides that she wants to start making medical decisions herself, and hires a lawyer to sue her parents. The story takes place mainly at the home of the Fitzgerald’s, (Anna, Kate, Jesse , Sara, and Brian) the Alexander Law offices, the Hospital, and the Courtroom.
“[A] Fascinating character study framed by a complex, gripping, story….A beautiful, heartbreaking, controversial and honest book.” –Booklist (starred review)
I enjoyed the descriptive, thoughtful writing style of the book, and how she told it from 5 different points of view. By hearing five separate characters points of views, and how she efficiently intertwined the relationships of the families, lawyers, judges, etc. I get a better understanding of what is happening in the book and what emotional toll it takes on everyone. Although it can make the book very complicated, because there is so much going on, I find it to also be a helpful technique that I do not see in other books. I also like the relationships the author creates between the separate events in the story. For example, how she can connect everything to fire. Brian works as a firefighter, Anna’s lawsuit and Kate’s disease could be described as a fire, etc. Picoult also writes into the depths of the characters feelings, as she does in many of her other books/novels. This is a very unique style of writing that I enjoy to read.
“There are pictures of me too, but not many…….It’s nobody’s fault, and it’s not a big deal, but it’s a little depressing all the same. A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch you.”
From reading this book I could tell that the author had some connection with the events. The book affected me, and made me relate and feel bad for the characters because she described them so well. I could relate to some of the experiences of Anna, but the medical events were new to me, so I paid attention to those the most. Picoult described the medical details of the story so that we could understand what was going on, and didn’t only use fancy words that we could not interpret. Overall, I enjoyed this book very much.