Book Review : My Sister's Keeper

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Author : Jodi Picoult

I came to know about this book from a list of "must read" books, which was published in the newspaper - "Times of India", a few weeks back. I had put this title in my wishlist too and bought it when I got the next chance to go to the bookstore. I bought it on one Friday and could not keep it down during the whole weekend and managed to finish it in two days. That is enough evidence of how good the book is.

Sara and Brian Fitzgerald, come to know that their two years old duaghter, Kate, has a complex kind of lukemia and their elder son - Jesse cannot be a match to be the donor of bone marrow for his sister. Sara and Brian opt for a genetically designed child to save their dying daughter and thus Anna comes in their lives. Anna goes through lots of medical procedures to keep her sister going, right from her birth for thirteen years. But it all changes when Anna decides to not being Kate's donor anymore and she wants the legal rights on her own body. The author vividly describes the struggle of all characters involved here, the parents, who, while taking care of their sick daughter and trying to increase her life with every possible effort, loose touch with their other children - Jesse and Anna. Jesse trying to grab the attention of his parents, gets himself into difficult situations. Anna suffers the most as even winning the case would mean loosing her own sister without whom she could never imagine her life. They all go through some very difficult and strange choices which are forced upon them in their lives. There are no obvious easy answers to all the queries which get raised in the book as we go along.

Along with this family's struggle there is a side story of lawyer Campbell and his past with Julia. Towards the end, when we think that everthing is taken care of, there is an unexpected twist and I could not read the last 3-4 pages without struggling with fuzziness in my eyes. This is the first book which actually made me cry.

The story and the whole sequence of events to narrate it make it a wonderful reading experience. The story is very touching and my mind is still full of all the characters of the story. One think I liked about the author is that she could portray the turmoil in the minds of the characters really well. When handling an emotional topic and close realtionships, this part becomes really important.

I would strongly recommend this book to those who like emotional and sensitive subjects.