Review #14: Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

Synopsis (from amazon.com):
Perennial bestseller Picoult (Change of Heart) delivers another engrossing family drama, spiced with her trademark blend of medicine, law and love. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe's daughter, Willow, was born with brittle bone disease, a condition that requires Charlotte to act as full-time caregiver and has strained their emotional and financial limits. Willow's teenaged half-sister, Amelia, suffers as well, overshadowed by Willow's needs and lost in her own adolescent turmoil. When Charlotte decides to sue for wrongful birth in order to obtain a settlement to ensure Willow's future, the already strained family begins to implode. Not only is the defendant Charlotte's longtime friend, but the case requires Charlotte and Sean to claim that had they known of Willow's condition, they would have terminated the pregnancy, a statement that strikes at the core of their faith and family. Picoult individualizes the alternating voices of the narrators more believably than she has previously, and weaves in subplots to underscore the themes of hope, regret, identity and family, leading up to her signature closing twists.

Review:
Having read Jodi Picoult books before, I had a sense of how this book would unfold. In soume ways I was surprised to find plot twists I had not expected, and in some ways I was unsurprised to find things exactly as I expected.

Picoult chooses topics that lead to serious life-altering changes for her characters. In this case, the birth of a child with a rare bone disorder. The book takes place five years after the birth, and each of the narrators (the mom, the sister, the obstetrician/mom's best friend, a lawyer, and a few others) address the story to the little girl with the disorder. It's an interesting technique, having each narrator telling the story of the little girl's life to the little girl.

The characters are an interesting mixture, and for the most part their complexities seem spot on. However, in places the characters do go to extremes that seem unrealistic, but luckily these few places don't hamper the overall impact of the story.

This story touched on some rather controversial issues, such as, if the mother had known early on in her pregnancy that her child would have such a debilitating disease would she have chosen to terminate the pregnancy? I think Picoult does an interesting job dealing with the issues she raises.

And yet...the reactions of the mother didn't always resonate with me.

The book ended much as many of Picoult's books do, and I found it quite unsatisfying.