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A review by mickeyreadsbooks
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
sad
medium-paced
5.0
My Sister's Keeper
For years this book has been on my TBR list. Somehow I always passed over it. I'm so glad I didn't read it as Leah lay dying and we were pleading, begging for a way through. But to read it on this side of that time is an interesting perspective. The premise is when a child, Kate, has leukemia and needs a perfect donor, the parents decide to make the perfectly matched embryo. In theory, her cord blood was the goal, but as the years have gone by that child, now a teen named Anna, is called on for more and more blood, bone marrow, etc, culminating in the need to have her kidney donated. She decides it's enough and sues for emancipation so she can have say over all medical decisions related to her body. In my post Leah life, I related to the never-ending cares for a sick child. The way the world stops every time she coughs funny or bleeds funny or even has even a small fever. I related to the mother who would do anything for her child. I related to the family in crisis. I empathized with the big kids who felt loss and unseen. Gosh then you add in the moral dilemma of autonomy over our own bodies juxtapositioned with the sanctity of life and I could not put this book down. I cried. I suffered with them. My heart ached.
I LOVED listening to it on audio book. Every main character is played and read by someone else and it brought the book to life in a beautiful way. So many great quotes. So much to mull over. I will definitely reread again at some point.
5 stars🌟
"Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every day: to glue a bad marriage toghether; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent's own image. 'They had me so I could save Kate,' the girl explains. 'They went to special doctors and everything and picked the embryo that would be a perfect genetic match.' " -Campbell
"And I, too, am suprising myself. With grim resolve I make a ballet out of rinsing the emesis basin and bringing it back. If you focus on sandbagging the beachhead you can ignore the tsuanmi thats approaching. Try it any other way and you'll go crazy" - Sarah
"I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are, we just don't necessarily want them to be there." - Sarah
"Because in America, even if the consequences are tragic you are not responsible for someone else's safety. You aren't obligated to help anyone else in distress. Not if you are the one who started the fire. Not if you are a passerby to a carwreck. Not if you are a perfectly matched donor.
We are here today because there's a difference in our system of justice between what's legal and what's moral. Sometimes it's easy to tell them apart. But every now and then, especially when they rub up against each other, right sometimes looks wrong, and wrong sometimes looks right."
-Campbell
For years this book has been on my TBR list. Somehow I always passed over it. I'm so glad I didn't read it as Leah lay dying and we were pleading, begging for a way through. But to read it on this side of that time is an interesting perspective. The premise is when a child, Kate, has leukemia and needs a perfect donor, the parents decide to make the perfectly matched embryo. In theory, her cord blood was the goal, but as the years have gone by that child, now a teen named Anna, is called on for more and more blood, bone marrow, etc, culminating in the need to have her kidney donated. She decides it's enough and sues for emancipation so she can have say over all medical decisions related to her body. In my post Leah life, I related to the never-ending cares for a sick child. The way the world stops every time she coughs funny or bleeds funny or even has even a small fever. I related to the mother who would do anything for her child. I related to the family in crisis. I empathized with the big kids who felt loss and unseen. Gosh then you add in the moral dilemma of autonomy over our own bodies juxtapositioned with the sanctity of life and I could not put this book down. I cried. I suffered with them. My heart ached.
I LOVED listening to it on audio book. Every main character is played and read by someone else and it brought the book to life in a beautiful way. So many great quotes. So much to mull over. I will definitely reread again at some point.
5 stars🌟
"Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every day: to glue a bad marriage toghether; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent's own image. 'They had me so I could save Kate,' the girl explains. 'They went to special doctors and everything and picked the embryo that would be a perfect genetic match.' " -Campbell
"And I, too, am suprising myself. With grim resolve I make a ballet out of rinsing the emesis basin and bringing it back. If you focus on sandbagging the beachhead you can ignore the tsuanmi thats approaching. Try it any other way and you'll go crazy" - Sarah
"I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are, we just don't necessarily want them to be there." - Sarah
"Because in America, even if the consequences are tragic you are not responsible for someone else's safety. You aren't obligated to help anyone else in distress. Not if you are the one who started the fire. Not if you are a passerby to a carwreck. Not if you are a perfectly matched donor.
We are here today because there's a difference in our system of justice between what's legal and what's moral. Sometimes it's easy to tell them apart. But every now and then, especially when they rub up against each other, right sometimes looks wrong, and wrong sometimes looks right."
-Campbell