My Sister's Keeper
"What do parents look like?
You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he’s really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that."
"Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished."
"There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop.
Maybe it's because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of my life. Maybe it's because they forgot.
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."
"And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded."
Jodi Picoult is such a brilliant author, and a perfectly quotable one at that. I haven't got to finishing the novel yet, but I'm definitely going to do that soon.
There's so many praises I can sing "My Sister's Keeper". Rarely do I come across a book that can leave such an indelible impression on my heart - it's almost like a small pebble that starts ripples through the entire surface of a pond, and rarely do I come across authors like Jodi Picoult - literary artists who craft intricate stories as if they were weaving a spiderweb. Through painstakingly constructing the details, Jodi Picoult paints a sophisticated masterpiece in "My Sister's Keeper", while still maintaining its simplicity & charm through the powerful yet subtle way it is written. And like a spiderweb, the story weaves the reader in and out of various scenarios that are presented as recounts of the different characters in the book. By providing a myriad of viewpoints into the issue, the reader gets to try on every pair of shoes to judge which fits them the most.
In a way, the story's also a work of irony - it reflects how deep a parent's love can go, but also how deep it should go. It can also be seen as food for thought in the realm of ethics - is it correct to "design" a child with the purpose of saving her sibling's life? Isn't that equivalent to viewing the child's own will and rights as a rotting log? Truly it's a novel which breaks out of traditions.
Describing a book - or even putting its summary into words, marks an epitome of difficulty for me. I guess every reader has his/her own way of perceiving a story, but Jodi Picoult's stories, for me, is undoubtedly one of the most engaging. You should try reading "My Sister's Keeper" if you haven't; I kinda recommend you to do so. :)
You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he’s really just hoping he makes it all the way across? Like that."
"Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it. There is always another appointment to be met, another bill to pay, another symptom presenting, another uneventful day to be notched onto the wooden wall. We have synchronized our watches, studied our calendars, existed in minutes, and completely forgotten to step back and see what we've accomplished."
"There are pictures of me, too, but not many. I go from infant to about ten years old in one fell swoop.
Maybe it's because I was the third child, and they were sick and tired of keeping a catalog of my life. Maybe it's because they forgot.
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."
"And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded."
Jodi Picoult is such a brilliant author, and a perfectly quotable one at that. I haven't got to finishing the novel yet, but I'm definitely going to do that soon.
There's so many praises I can sing "My Sister's Keeper". Rarely do I come across a book that can leave such an indelible impression on my heart - it's almost like a small pebble that starts ripples through the entire surface of a pond, and rarely do I come across authors like Jodi Picoult - literary artists who craft intricate stories as if they were weaving a spiderweb. Through painstakingly constructing the details, Jodi Picoult paints a sophisticated masterpiece in "My Sister's Keeper", while still maintaining its simplicity & charm through the powerful yet subtle way it is written. And like a spiderweb, the story weaves the reader in and out of various scenarios that are presented as recounts of the different characters in the book. By providing a myriad of viewpoints into the issue, the reader gets to try on every pair of shoes to judge which fits them the most.
In a way, the story's also a work of irony - it reflects how deep a parent's love can go, but also how deep it should go. It can also be seen as food for thought in the realm of ethics - is it correct to "design" a child with the purpose of saving her sibling's life? Isn't that equivalent to viewing the child's own will and rights as a rotting log? Truly it's a novel which breaks out of traditions.
Describing a book - or even putting its summary into words, marks an epitome of difficulty for me. I guess every reader has his/her own way of perceiving a story, but Jodi Picoult's stories, for me, is undoubtedly one of the most engaging. You should try reading "My Sister's Keeper" if you haven't; I kinda recommend you to do so. :)