Review of My Sister's Keeper

This story is about a family dealing with a potentially terminal illness, leukemia. Sara and Brian have a perfect family, with having both a boy, Jesse, and girl, Kate, blessing their life. Until Kate is diagnosed with acute version of leukemia. Their world falls apart and they look desperate for answers and above all a possible cure for Kate.
That's when their third daughter, Anna, came into the world. Designed to be a perfect match for being a donor for Kate, she's hardly born when the first procedure is done. Most of her life is shadowed by the illness of Kate and her giving blood, stamcells and more to keep the disease of Kate at bay.
When she turns 13 she suddenly doesn't want to keep giving her own blood and body to her sister, who keeps deteriorating. When Kate is in need of a kidney, she seeks help to stop her parents leeching of her and try to live her own life.
This is the beginning of an heartbreaking struggle to be heard, a struggle to survive whether you're suffering from leukemia or suffering from being a parent, sister or brother of the one slowly dying.


I've heard a lot about Jodi Picoult, before I picked this novel of her up. It's my first of her novels and she writes painstakingly emotional and realistical. I both loved and hated this novel. I loved it because every novel that evokes emotion from me, aside from disgust, is a winner according to my standards. I cried a lot through the novel and was thoroughly intrigued with how the story unfolded. Sometimes it lacked a little pace, but in life patience is a good virtue.
The reason I hated it, is because since I've become a mother myself I'm especially emotional when it comes to children and losing them. Losing my daughter is losing myself and even reading about someone else possibly losing their child hits me in a very personal way. I can't ignore it, since I've got a kid, I'm very sensitive towards any kind of human suffering, especially children. Even in fictional form, because at this very moment someone is dealing with this in real life. My heart goes out to the parents whose children are seriously sick or injured, and my sympathies for those who are surviving without their children.

Personal rating: 3,5 stars

Review of Water For Elephants

It didn't take me long to finish this novel. I've already seen the movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Patterson so I knew what I was in for.
Mostly I like it the other way around, first reading the novel and then seeing the adaptation, but it worked fine this time.
I had been a time I had seen the movie, but the plot was still somewhere in my memory and of course that held out some of the surprises in the novel.

Water for elephants is a story about a young man, Jacob, who's on a drift, after losing both his parents and ending up on a circus train in the early 30's. He gets a job as the show's vet and becomes close to the girl, Marlena, who's doing the liberty act with the horses. As the circus steadily tries to make a living, the tumultuous relationship between Jacob, Marlena and her husband August whose suffering from paranoid mood swings. In the end every thing spirales together in a heartbreaking climax.

I liked it. It was a lovely romantic story filled with joy, laughter, tears and fights. In some way it made me think of Moulin Rouge, with also an almost imposssible connection between the star and a poor sod trying to make a living.
I'm glad this story ends more happily than Moulin Rouge, though.
The story being infused with occasional tidings from elderly Jacob wasn't necessary in my opinion, but it didn't do anything hurtful to the story either. Only the ending of it was somewhat hollywoodian (happy endings). It might have been harsher, but it would have been closer to life if he would've just withered away in the resting home. A cruel jape to how important somethings may appear in one point of time and how it can feel it being all in vain so many years later.

Coincidence makes for the circus being in the neighbourhood this weekend and I'm actually curious to go see what's it all about, because in all of my life I've been to a circus only once and I don't recall much of it but getting a free ticket and being in a small round tent.