Having heard the hype built around "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult, I confess that I was hoping this novel was going to hold much more weight than it actually did. The plot revolves around a child who is being asked by her parents to donate a kidney to her cancer-striken sister and the legalities behind claiming yourself "medically emancipated".

The novel is well researched and the plot moves pretty rapidly from past to present. It's just the cliche metaphors that f... (show more)

Having heard the hype built around "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult, I confess that I was hoping this novel was going to hold much more weight than it actually did. The plot revolves around a child who is being asked by her parents to donate a kidney to her cancer-striken sister and the legalities behind claiming yourself "medically emancipated".

The novel is well researched and the plot moves pretty rapidly from past to present. It's just the cliche metaphors that failed to capture (to me) the plight that young Anna was undergoing. Everything seems to flow back to some childhood Hallmark greeting card as if this honed in on some inner-psyche that the author could fail to provide to us in the current dialogue. By the end, when she went so far as to compare everyone to a constellation, it became too much. The medical jargon seemed real, the people did not.

I have not seen the adaptation as of yet but do feel that much more could have been done from a medical perspective with the character of Kate. Someone told me that the movie ends differently, and having heard that, I can't help but think this would have hit the point home more. Driveling on and on about "accidental death speak" and a mother who fails to understand didn't really make me feel anything toward the one person everyone in this book was trying to save. You definitely get Anna doesn't want her sister to die. You just didn't feel anything about it. There was LOTS about the "sister's keeper" but only a few chapters even remotely dedicated to "the sister". No digging to China or unruly stories about a family torn apart is going to make me feel that.

"My Sister's Keeper" is as cliche as the title reads. (show less)