Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
Finally! I managed to borrow a Jodi Picoult book from the library after umpteenth attempts of finding a new Jodi Picoult book to read and review on! HANDLE WITH CARE! This book just reminded me of how much I really love Jodi Picoult and her brilliant story-telling skills.
Before I start sharing my point of view about this amazing novel, I would like to quote other brilliant authors and professional reviewers who have also commented/shared their views and opinions about Jodi Picoult and Handle with care.
“You men out there who think Ms. Picoult is a chick thing need to get with the program. Her books are an everyone thing, and the current offering — about a little girl whose bones are so brittle that they break almost at a puff of wind — is her best since My Sister’s Keeper. It’s a legal/medical thriller, but at bottom it’s a story about the American heart of darkness: a small-town marriage under stress. Picoult writes with unassuming brilliance and never descends into soap opera.”
—Stephen King (Another one of my favourite authors!
“Handle With care is everything faithful readers would expect from Picoult, handled in her thoughtful, elegiac prose…provocative and complex.”
—BookPage magazine
“Perennial bestseller Picoult (Change of Heart) delivers another engrossing family drama, spiced with her trademark blend of medicine, law and love. 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.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
Yes, it is indeed really that amazing. Handle with care is a 550 paged novel about the O’Keefe family and the various problems they face when Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe’s daughther, Willow, is born with severe Osteogenesis Impefecta (OI). They are devastasted. To add to their sorrows, doctors have also mentioned that she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows,a lifetime of pain.
As the family struggles to make ends meet to cover Willow’s medical expenses, Charlotte thinks she has found an answer. If she files a wrongful birth lawsuit against her gynecologist for not telling her in advance that her child would be born severely disabled, the monetary payouts might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow. But it means that Charlotte has to get up in a court of law and say in public that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance – words that her husband can’t abide, that Willow will hear, and that Charlotte cannot reconcile. And the gynecologist she’s suing isn’t just her physician – it’s her best friend.
Handle With Care explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, at which point should an gynecologist counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How disabled is TOO disabled? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love? Would you alienate the rest of your family? Would you be willing to lie to your friends, to your spouse, to a court? And perhaps most difficult of all – would you admit to yourself that you might not actually be lying?
As I was reading through the book, I could literally feel the pain when Willow broke a bone. I could literally feel the ache in Sean’s and Charlotte’s heart when they not only see their child dying but also their family breaking apart. I could literally feel the hatred and betrayal Charlotte’s gynecologist (who is also her best friend) felt when Charlotte attempted to sue her in court for wrongful birth.
Jodi Picoult is indeed magnificent. The amazing twist at the end of the story was like a cherry on top of the cake. The ending was something I really did not expect and it definitely got me thinking and wondering as to why Jodi Picoult wanted to end it in such a way? Well, then it striked me….
Sometimes, life is not all about worrying about the current or future problems that you may have. But, its also about cherishing every single moment of your life. Its about enjoying every moment with your loved ones. So what if you could live till you are 100 but half of it is being wasted worrying about your sicknesses or education or money? Go live your life cause you will never know when it is going to end. It will end when it is fated to end. Till then, enjoy it. Thank God that you are born perfect with no disabilities and with a perfect happy family. Thank God that you can live your life however you want to lead it. Thank God that you have got everything that you will ever NEED. Thank God for being born to this world. Quit complaining. Life sucks sometimes. But the longer you continue to dwell on the problem, the harder it will be to overcome it. So suck it up and move on already.
To all those who really think you have major problems and are depressed about it..read this book and you will feel much better after which. (: Trust me! There are others who have worst problems yet they are the ones who know how to live their life to the fullest. To me, they are the most successful. :D
-
haifas liked this
-
rbhl liked this
-
simply-quotes liked this
-
bookcoffeeclub posted this
