Handle With Care

Hello!

WARNING: Stop reading right now if you plan to read Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult or don't want to know the ending!!

I just finished this book.  It was the first Jodi Picoult book I had read in a long time.  I first started reading her books when I started working at the QEH in early '08.  Anytime you were in the hallways or eating up front by the Pantry you would see someone holding one of her books.  You'd be waiting in line in the cafeteria and someone would see you holding her book and strike up a conversation about which books you had read and which ones you loved.  It was like a cult or something.

My friend Lynn recommended her to me and lent me her copy of The Pact.  I found it really interesting and off I went on a string of her books.  I read one after the other after the other.  After probably five or six of them I needed a break.  The subject matter is so intense and heavy.  There is usually death involved.  It was too much.  Once I went back to "chick lit" I never returned to the sometimes depressing, sorrowful stories she wrote.  Until recently.

During pregnancy all I read were pregnancy or baby related books.  After I had Harrison I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to read a paragraph, let alone an entire novel.  Now that he has a nighttime schedule that is working out well I have found more of a desire to read at night before I turn in.  I read the few books I had kicking around - a Nicholas Sparks, a Jennifer Weiner.  One night I really wanted to read but all I could find was this Jodi Picoult novel that I had been given from someone at work and hadn't mustered up the strength to read.  I figured I'd read a chapter or two and that would satisfy me until I could get to the bookstore and pick up something more uplifting.

I found that I got into it fairly quickly though.  I mean, I wasn't staying up hours later than normal just to find out what happened or anything, but it kept my interest each night for a few chapters.  Once I was three quarters of the way through I started spending much more time reading, trying to figure out what was going to come of it all.  I had seen the book on my friend Jill's table when I first started reading it and asked her if she liked it.  She said she didn't like the ending.  This didn't surprise me as the endings of her Ms. Picoult's books are often depressing.  Often a surprise death or something of the like.  I was prepared for that when I started reading it.

The story is about Charlotte, a mother whose second daughter has a very serious condition called osteogenesis imperfecta which causes her bones to be extremely brittle.  She suffered 7 breaks in utero and 63 by the time she was 6 and a half.  Her name is Willow.  Charlotte is married to Sean and Charlotte has an older daughter from before she met Sean named Amelia.  Amelia is 13 in the story.  Piper is Charlotte's best friend, and for the first half of Charlotte's pregnancy with Willow, her ob-gyn.  Essentially it's about Charlotte deciding to sue Piper for wrongful birth - basically saying that Piper should have recognized fetal abnormalities on her 18 week ultrasound and given her the option to abort the pregnancy.  Charlotte wouldn't have aborted the pregnancy in the first place (she thinks) but she wants so much to give Willow a better life that she is willing to say this in order to get the money it takes to cover all Willow's medical expenses and give her the best treatment options available.

Each chapter is told from one of the main characters points of view:  Charlotte, Sean, Piper, Amelia, Marin (the attorney who is representing Charlotte), and finally, in the last chapter, Willow.  There is a lot that happens throughout the course of the book, from flashbacks of how Charlotte met Piper, Charlotte and Sean's relationship, Amelia's difficulty being a sister to a disabled child, Charlotte's pregnancy, Willow's birth and life up to this point and how it affects everyone around her.  This was all fine, if a bit depressing. 

The ending though, like Jill, drove me nuts.  We find that Charlotte and Sean's relationship repairs itself, Amelia finally tells her parents how difficult it is being Willow's sister and how she feels invisible, and gets help for her multiple problems that have stemmed from this.  Charlotte wins the lawsuit and is awarded the hefty sum of eight million dollars.   

In the final chapter we are first introduced to Willow's point of view.  She explains that Amelia got help and is painting a lot and happier.  Charlotte and Sean are doing well.  Willow is, for the first time, fracture free and loving it.  They have the cheque for the eight million stuck to the fridge, never having cashed it, and getting along just fine knowing they have it for backup should an emergency come up.  Then, just like that Willow heads outside to find Amelia and falls through some ice and drowns.  Boom. 

I just don't understand why someone always has to die in her books.  The subject matter is heavy enough and lots of lessons are learned without always having to kill someone off in the final pages.  Can't you just for once have a happy ending after a book full of misery?  Grrrrrr. 

I don't think I will be reading anymore of her books for a while.  A long while.