My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper
by Jodi Picoult

First published in Great Britain in 2004.

I was introduced to Jodi Picoult by my mum.  We would read the same book and then talk for days about it and what we would have done in the situation.  My Sister's Keeper was the first of Picoult's books I read and has stayed my favourite of hers.

It tells the story of a mother Sara, whose daughter Kate is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia when she is just two.  Sara and her husband Brian decide to create a baby perfectly matched with Kate, to provide much-needed bone marrow.  This is Anna.  Then, when Anna is thirteen, she decides she no longer wants to help her sister and sues her parents for the rights to her own body.
This decision and consequences of it, both obvious and secondary, form the plot of the book.

It is told from each person's perspective, including Anna and Kate's brother Jesse, Anna's lawyer Campbell and her guardian ad litem Julia.  As a reader you get the whole story from all sides, which makes it quite difficult at times to choose who you agree with.

As characters go, these are really thought through, and ones who stay with you long after the last page.  Anna is, at times, a sterotypical teenager - she gets angry and has arguments, but is obviously mature for her age, due mostly to the situation with her sister she has been in since birth.  At times I forgot how young she was, but then she would do something like offer to polish Campbell's doorknobs to help pay him to be her lawyer, and it was obvious.

Sara and Brian provide the opposing sides of the argument from a parental perspective, and we also get to see how Anna's decision, in a less obvious way, affects Jesse.  Through it all Kate is trying to keep everybody happy and stay out of the arguments, and I did find myself wishing she would stick up for Anna more at times - especially later in the book.

The courtroom and law talk can get a bit full-on, and it's clear that lots of research has gone into the case, but Campbell and Julia keep it as layman friendly as possible, without being patronising.

As a bit of a side not, don't watch the film first (preferably don't watch it at all).  I saw it after reading the book, and it just made me angry.

Overall I would highly recommend this if you want a book that leaves you asking yourself 'what would I do?'
All of Picoult's books are like this, so they can get a bit samey if you read them soon after each other.  Others of hers I would recommend are Nineteen Minutes and Keeping Faith.