Picoult's not an author that I'd ever have been likely to read without one of her books being foisted on me - I've not (and still don't) know much about her, but my vague impression has always been that she's a kind of writer for the middle-brow and for women (this is me at my most open-minded and unsnobby, évidemment) - though the vagueness of that impression is becoming obvious as I try to specify it right now - and unlikely to do much for me. But having one of her books foisted on me is exactly what happened a while back, thanks to Trudy from MS, and having read My Sister's Keeper, I find that (1) my preconceptions about the content of Picoult's work were entirely accurate and (2) my preconceptions about their effect were, as it turns out, a bit off the mark, 'cause while you could never mistake this novel for high literature, it has a lot going for it and worked for me nonetheless.
The premise is this: Kate is born with leukemia, of a form that can only be staved off by frequent transfusions - and, sometimes, more invasive transplantive surgeries - from a very close match. Neither her parents nor her elder brother is close enough; her parents, confronting this battle for their daughter's life, decide to have another child who will (through a bit of scientific engineering) be a suitable match...so what happens when that second daughter, Anna, begins to grow up (she's 13, I think) and wants to make her own decisions about her body, after a childhood of being subject to constant discomfort and pain, both physical and emotional?
The short chapters are told from a range of alternating points of view in the first person present tense, which works well: those of Anna; each of the parents (Brian and Sara (that latter sometimes from a few years back, to provide the back story and fill in why she made some of the choices she did)); Anna and Kate's troubled brother Jesse; Campbell, the lawyer who retained by Anna on a pro bono basis; and Julia, the court-appointed guardian ad litem.
For me, the main pull of My Sister's Keeper is the emotional dimension rather than the 'ideas' aspect - Picoult is very good at involving the reader, at showing multiple sides to a story, and she works the situation for all the pathos that it's worth. There were times when I felt that I was being manipulated, but those tended to be the points at which there was some kind of actual emotional response, so I didn't mind.
