Book Review - Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

Synopsis:

Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.

Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

First Line: "Things break all the time."

Random Quote: "Families were never what you wanted them to be. We all wanted what we couldn't have: the perfect child, the doting husband, the mother who'd let us go. We lived in our grown-up dollhouses completely unaware that, at any moment, a hand might come in & change around everything we'd become accustomed to."

Review: To say that Jodi Picoult writes issues books is an oversimplification. Don't get me wrong - she does write issues book & can be somewhat formulaic; at the same time she manages to create characters you can believe in & puts them in situations that are also very real.

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What if your son & his girlfriend have a suicide pact, but only the girlfriend dies? What if your daughter's boyfriend (& son of your close friends) date rapes her? What if your child has a deadly disease & you have a second child to be her donor & your second child gets sick of doing that? What if your small son is sexually abused? There are common threads, for sure, in all of these books - they all tackle an issue, they're all set in suburban New England, the characters are all white & fairly safely lower to upper middle class.

I think she's successful at this beyond the entertainment value & beyond the formulaic nature of the genre because she doesn't take the easy path with her characters. These are not books about heroic mothers curing the cancer of their 6-year-olds while coaching their son's soccer team to the world championship. These are books about flawed, real people in tough situations who don't always make good choices & that's why they work on so many levels.

Having said all of that, I like this one least of all of her books. As most people have or will point out, this book is a lot like her book, My Sister's Keeper. Both deal with a mortally ill child, sibling conflict, & a lawsuit. In this case, Willow is born with osteogensis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that makes her bones exceedingly fragile & prone to breakage. Her mother decides to sue her obstetrician (& best friend) & the rest of the novel revolves around the consequences of this lawsuit for the whole family, including Amelia, Willow's older & often ignored sister.

Charlotte, the mother, is not a picture of martyred perfection (thank God). While her choices may be questionable, her motive - more money to help pay for all of the things that her daughter will need in her lifetime of care - is not. Yes, the suit requires that she claim wrongful birth, but that isn't really her fault. Nor is it her fault that our current healthcare system makes long-term care of disabled people nigh on to impossible for most families who literally break under the financial strain. This book & this character very clearly illustrate the poor choices that are often available to people in this situation.

I liked all of the rest of the characters, too, although they were at times less successful & more thinly written. I would have, in particular, liked for Piper (the obstetrician & best friend) to have been more fleshed out. I even liked the children who seemed like real (& sometimes bratty) kids rather than the paragons of childlike virtue or evil that many writers thrust upon us.

I was much less fond of the technique of all of the characters addressing Willow throughout the book - as if you were Willow & they were telling you the story. It seemed just that - technique - & very forced in places which took me out of the world of the story. The ending, which I won't reveal here, was one of those twists that seemed tacked on just to create a twist. It was unnecessary & I really disliked it.

Overall I like Ms. Picoult's books & I liked this one, but I've noticed that the quality of her novels is going down with each progressive book & that worries me. I hope she takes her time on the next novel - her work is too good for her to become slapdash.