Review #8: Censored or Challenged Title

Picoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper: a Novel. New York: Washington Square, 2005. Print.

Annotation: A young women’s decision to bring a lawsuit against her parents, brings devastating results that can break a family apart.

Justification for Nomination:

MY SISTER'S KEEPER by Jodi Picoult is the amazing, gut-wrenching, sad, funny, insightful, moving and thought-provoking story of this American family. Readers are asked to think about all of the scientific underdoing’s in the world --- of the ways in which these tools are used or, unfortunately, abused, and how the results of redirecting fate sometimes feels like the dizzying sensations experienced in threading one's way through the mirrors of a funhouse.

This novel is insightful in that Picoult gives us some very difficult questions for the readers. Does Anna have the obligation to risk her own health to save her sister? Do her parents have the right to make the medical decisions about Anna's donor role, and where should their loyalties lie? There seems to be no right or wrong answers in the novel to those questions but does lead to thinking about scientific research into playing god with DNA.

Picoult paints a powerfully emotional picture of a family in turmoil. She adds additional tension to the story through their brother Jesse, whose drug taking and criminal tendencies add even more burdens to an already overwrought situation. I love the way she travels from first to third-person storytelling and also the way she tells this story from every main character’s perspective because then the reader hears the voices of each family member, as well as that of Anna's lawyer and of the legal guardian appointed to watch out for her interests.

The novel is an excellent novel to read, it is full of moral and ethical questions that will have the reader glued to the pages. The novel flourish in that Picoult does a great job in defining characters, plots that keeps you reading, and her ability to keep us guess throughout the book till the end; you never know what will happen next. I recommend this book for any young adult who will fight for their own freedom.

Genre Category: Censored or Challenged Title, Coming of age, Realistic