Leaving Time, Jodi Picoult

I am a big Picoult fan. Always have been. I love the way that she weaves her tales, the depth and diversity of her characters and the intensity of her themes. I love the fact that her books are all so radically different yet so clearly ring with her unique voice.

I’m not quite sure how to even talk about this book. In some ways it was quite confronting – these lonely, fraught characters, all searching for something illusive. A mother, a daughter, a grandmother and elephants who despite their regal stoicism behave with more emotion and conviction than some of the people around them.

My heart went out to Jenna, the daughter, desperate to find her mother. I ached for her loneliness, and for the fragility and angst of the two unlikely characters she chooses to help her in her quest; Serenity Jones, a psychic, and Virgil Stanhope, an alcoholic Private Detective. And I felt for Alice, Jenna’s mother, whose life slowly unravels driving her to escape. The essence of all Picoult’s books is always people and their relationships and this book is no different:

“If you are a mother, you must have someone to take care of.

If that someone is taken from you, whether it is a newborn or an individual old enough to have offspring of its own, can you still call yourself a mother?

Staring at Kagiso, I realized that she hadn’t just lost her calf. She had lost herself. And although I had studied elephant grief for a living, although I had seen numerous deaths in the wild before and had recorded them dispassionately, the way an observer should – now, I broke down and started to cry.

Nature is a cruel bitch. …”

Underlying these human relationships is a web of complex emotions:

“‘I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room – but eventually, you learn to live with it.’

Somehow, I thought, elephants had taken it a step further. They didn’t grimace every time they entered the room and saw that couch. They said, Remember how many good memories we had here? And they sat, for just a little while, before moving elsewhere.”

I feel as though I can’t say much more without really destroying this book for those who choose to read it. So read it. You won’t be disappointed.

Perfect Match, Jodi Picoult

There are many reasons to enjoy Jodi Picoult – of course, the main one is that she writes a cracker of a story. Perfect Match is no exception. It’s a gripping story. Meet Nina Frost, a prosecutor who faces the most devastating crimes, deals with the most devastating of victims and tries her utmost to conduct herself according to the laws that bind her profession as well as the morals and ethics by which she lives.

Frost is a likable and indeed a noble character. Readers will easily empathise with her and her life and her mission to defend and support these victims.

However, Frost’s world crumbles when she and her husband discover that their five year old son has been sexually assaulted. Suddenly, Frost is confronted with the reality of the nightmare that she sees her clients battling and she is seemingly powerless to deal with it.

This book is about people and the lengths to which they will go when trying to defend those that they love. It is about the battle professional and personal values, and, above all, it is about the mistakes that we make and how those mistakes can effect our lives and those of the people around us.

This one is a fantastic holiday read with some great fodder for discussion thrown in to the mix.