My Sister's Keeper

by Jodi Piccoult
Washington Square Press, 2005

Reviewed by Carilee Moran
My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Piccoult, is not the kind of book title that attracts me. Except that the SWE book discussion group had chosen it for February's meeting, I would never have gone near it. That would have been a shame. The book concerns a family whose middle daughter, Kate, has had repeated bouts of leukemia since she was three years old. But it is really about the youngest daughter, Anna, who was born and bred to serve first as a source of umbilical cord blood cells for her older sister, and later endures many other procedures to provide raw materials for Kate's fight against leukemia. As the book opens, the issue on the table is whether Anna, thirteen years old, must donate a kidney to sixteen year old Kate, who is now in renal failure. Anna gets herself a lawyer and sues for medical emancipation.

I have become a bit jaded about book themes. I had come to believe that there might not be that much new left under the sun to write about. So many stories are just variations on The Odyssey or Romeo and Juliet. But the theme of My Sister's Keeper was fresh, and highly relevant to the age we live in. Will this society allow some of its children to be treated as resources to be harvested? What are the implications for the lives of the others in a family structured around the needs of one sick child?

In My Sister's Keeper, Piccoult explores the points of view of each family member and of Anna's lawyer. The mother's life has been consumed by the fight for Kate's life. She notices little else. Her eldest child, Jessie, has been put off to the side for many years, and he has developed a nasty habit of setting fire to things. This might be a way to simultaneously vent his anger at the situation and draw attention to himself. ÊAnna herself seems surprisingly meek, and clearly adores Kate. This is hard to reconcile with her adamant refusal to give up her kidney to save her sister. There is a reason, but it is buried in one of several interesting plot twists that develop throughout the novel.

Piccoult's writing is competent, and she brings new ways of describing situations that I found appealing, such as Anna's version of a creation myth, which also encapsulates Anna's relationship to her family.

A peripheral story line about a resurrected romance between the lawyer and the court-appointed guardian ad litem for Anna seemed unnecessary, and some in the discussion group found it unbelievable. We were uniformly disappointed in the ending, which seemed to solve too many problems, too very conveniently. In spite of this, the group found it a unique and compelling story, well worth reading, giving it an average rating of four stars.

4 stars out of 5

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