Monday, June 29, 2009

Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult - I had to wait until summer to read and review this book. Summer...when all the books would be back on the library shelves, ready for me to finally get to select all the books I'd been intent on keeping in students' hands during the school year. I selected a whole slew of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and started with the highly anticipated new book to hit the shelves by Jodi Picoult.

Much like My Sisters Keeper in tone, I felt Picoult was back to her previous stellar writing in this book. The story of Willow and her family, the book chronicles Willow's fight with a rare genetic disease known as OI, a disease that leaves her bones brittle and breaking at the drop of a hat. In order to deal with the mounting financial repercussions of Willow's disease, her mother sues Willow's doctor for wrongful birth asserting that she did not warn them of Willow's disease soon enough. That if she had, they may have opted to abort Willow. However, Picoult's plot can never be that easy. To complicate it, that doctor happens to also be her best friend and Willow's Godmother. Even more complicating is that her father does not want to sue so, instead, sides with the defense. All the elements of classic Picoult are there....the troubled sibling, the public servant father, the friendship in peril, the parents in disagreement, the court case.

I think I'd like to see this one turned into a movie as well. This weekend I saw My Sisters Keeper and, although I felt it was not at all like the book, I was enthralled by it.