Book Review: Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's best-selling My Sister's Keeper had both my mother and I crying like children until our eyes were red and swollen for two days. It was so moving and poetic, so original, and at the same time so heartbreaking that we had to make the difficult decision to jump right to the end and stop sobbing over all the miniscule details in between. It was a beautiful book.

Which is precisely why I did not hesitate to pick up a copy of Ms. Picoult's newest fictional novel, Handle with Care.

The subject matter and the characters are eerily similar to the plot & characters of My Sister's Keeper - a beautiful child is diagnosed with a life-threatening, incurable, debilitating disorder. In this case, it's osteogenesis imperfecta, a severe form of brittle bone disease. An obsessively protecting, fiercely loving mother. An overlooked, angsty sister. A compassionate lawyer with a conscience. A hearing and a trial. An ending that's supposed to come as a surprise.

Had Ms. Picoult ran out of brilliant ideas? Just because the disabled child plus controversial court case formula proved to be a success in My Sister's Keeper, doesn't mean she could pull the entire cast and situation out of a best-seller, give them new names and a new disease, then call it a new book.

But that's not even why this book was such a disappointment. Although the mother was doing what she felt to be right for all the wrong reasons in My Sister's Keeper, she didn't appear to be spiteful to the readers. She still retained vestiges of human conscience and even though I didn't agree with what she did, I knew she did it out of love. But Charlotte, the pastry chef cum mother of Willow the disabled six year old, was so manipulative, irresponsible, and such a bitch in all her theory of "the ends should justify the means," that, at times, I simply felt like hitting her.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the tragedy happened at the end, I felt a sort of savage joy. It was inappropriate and Ms. Picoult probably expected her readers to lament and to cry the same way they did for the poor family in MSK, but Charlotte totally deserved what she got.

I definitely had more respect for Ms. Picoult as a writer before this book happened.

(Image taken from http://www.popular.com.sg/)

Sometimes, you need to appreciate the spoilers.

I'm half way through my copy of Twilight, book 1 of Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight Saga. It's a great book, really. Just as I was making up my mind to buy the other 3 books in the series, I made the mistake of reading some people's reviews on the final installment (titled Breaking Dawn) -- the reviews were far from positive.
--warning: spoilers ahead--

It's not that people didn't like Breaking Dawn or the conclusion Ms Meyer has drawn up for her fans, it's just that most readers seemed to have a problem with the not-so-subtle message she was trying to send.
The moral of the vampire-human-werewolf love triangle is supposed to be sacrifice and selflessness. But the main character, Bella Swan, is possibly the most immature, self-centered heroine ever created. It feels like Ms Meyer has forgotten to give Bella any personality at all because she was kept so busy describing over and over again the beauty of Edward, the vampire. As a result, Bella is so unimpressionable both in her own eyes and in the eyes of the readers, and defines herself based on cooler "others" -- namely, Edward and Jacob the werewolf, both of whom are willing to sacrifice their lives for her. Even though I'm not even done with book 1, I already have an idea of the kind of happy ending Ms Meyer has in store for everyone, and I have issues with it. Despite my interest in the love triangle which the story centers itself on, I'm totally giving up on Twilight Saga and on Stephenie Meyer's works because I wholeheartedly disagree with her message.
I like happy endings, and I like Enchanted and Cinderella, they were cheesy but cute. But based on the dissatisfied readers' complaints about Twilight Saga, Ms Meyer seems to want her young (mainly female) teenage fans to think that an eighteen year old child-woman does not need to be independent, nor does she need education. She just needs to marry a man--preferably a rich, immortal man who can in turn make her immortal and shower her with material goods--have his baby, and live happily ever after. Who cares if she can't support herself, heavily relies on others, and does not develop as a person throughout the entire time? Who cares if her boyfriend suddenly leaves her? she can just go ahead and find another man to cling onto. And what if her boyfriend decides to come back and she's torn in between the two men, both of whom profess their eternal, undying love for her?
She can just marry one of them (the richer one), and then make a deal to let the other one go for her child (which she has with the one she marries) instead!
That's just wrong on so many levels, not to mention disgustingly morbid. Imagine going after the daughter of the woman you love but can't have!
In the end, Bella gets everything without even trying, and she does not make a single sacrifice. She becomes a vampire, gains immortality, gets the beautiful and faithful Edward, begs for sex, and becomes pregnant with his baby -- and Meyer claimed that this is the story she wanted to write all along. I can't even begin to tell you what a letdown it was. But trust me, it's so disappointing that I'm bothering to type all this crap up right now at almost 3 in the morning even though I'm having difficulty thinking coherently or even keeping my eyes from closing involuntarily.
You can't even use the excuse of "Why not? It's fictional/fantasy!" for the wrongness of the ending because it's illogical, incoherent, and most importantly, where's the moral? Fantasies are supposed to center around a main ethical argument or a moral so readers young and old can enjoy the stories and learn something in the process. Ms Meyer's fanbase is primarily made up of impressionable teenage girls, they've followed Stephenie Meyer faithfully from Twilight to New Moon, Eclipse to finally, Breaking Dawn, and I'm highly doubtful that this is the kind of ending anyone has anticipated for. On top of that, I really don't think that the glorious "marry young, marry rich, forget about schooling", "baby-having-baby," and "turn to the daughter if you can't have the mother" notions are such great message to be sending out to anyone at all, let along her fans.

I disapprove (not that it means much) and urge anyone who's bothering to read this post to NOT read Twilight Saga and read something more worthwhile instead (even Harry Potter had more depth and Harry experienced very significant personal growth than Bella, who most readers claim to have remained flat, one-dimensional throughout), or if you're already reading it, finish the book you've got and just... stop. I'll still finish my copy of book 1 so it won't be a total waste of my 365baht, but tomorrow I'll go to Kino and find something else to read.