Book review: Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

Sunday, October 16, 2022 Permalink

One thing Jodi Picoult does and does well is highlight often-fraught realities and force readers to consider their own uncomfortable opinions and assumptions. I’ve mentioned this as she’s written about racism and reproductive rights and (most recently) COVID. Here she tackles a few complex issues – including something I won’t mention as it’s a spoiler.

But we also spend time with a mother – who endured an abusive relationship until her son was 6 years of age – now forced to question whether her son is capable of the same violent behaviour as his father… either inherited DNA infecting his make-up or by witnessing (when young) his father’s actions.

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four-stars

Book review: Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 Permalink

I used to love Jodi Picoult’s books. Some felt a bit obvious or preachy, or perhaps overly spiritual but they were full of emotion yet subtly poignant. However… after some time they became a bit sameish and it felt like I was reading the same story, with different players and themes in a different setting.

Having said that I very much appreciated some of the themes she’s tackled in a nuanced way recently, such as racism in Small Great Things and women’s reproductive rights in A Spark of Light. I felt like her last book, The Book of Two Ways, was a bit of a departure and I’m afraid I put it aside, the detail of Egyptian history and language being too much for me.

Her latest, Wish You Were Here, is a difficult read to describe. You think it’s going to be one thing. But then it’s not. And for a while I really liked where it was heading. But then there’s a change of direction again. It was obviously an important book to her however and Picoult has written a note in the back describing why she felt impassioned to write it.

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four-stars

Book review: A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

Saturday, October 6, 2018 Permalink

Jodi Picoult is probably known best for some of her early work and I too was an early adopter, reading anything and everything she wrote in the early 2000s.

I drifted away for a while, but was impressed with her 2016 novel Small Great Things which centred around race and the related notions of privilege and guilt.

Her latest, A Spark of Light is set in a women’s centre, one of a few remaining clinics in Mississipi to offer a range of reproductive choices to women, including terminations.

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four-half-stars

Book review: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Saturday, October 8, 2016 Permalink

In mid 2001 I was heading to a health retreat for three decadent weeks of pampering, healthy eating, exercise and seclusion; and was in need of some reading fodder. I stumbled across a deal involving three books by an author I’d not heard of. They all sounded good so I snapped them up. And my love of Jodi Picoult was born.

I should mention I’ve now skipped a couple of books and haven’t adored them all equally, but her early ones – in particular – I loved, so I awaited her latest with great excitement.

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four-stars