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A review by katieconley
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
4.0
This book was so sad! I cried my way through it. It was hard (and easy) to ready. I think as a parent it is even harder. It takes place in Upper Darby, Rhode Island and tells the story of a family who’s daughter is toddler daughter is diagnosed with terminal leukemia. The family decides to have another baby who’s been genetically engineered to be a perfect donor match for her older sister. After subjecting the youngest to many procedures in hopes of prolonging the life of the elder sister they have to decide when is it too much?
Here are some of my highlights:
good hard look at why babies get born, they’d conclude that most people have children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn’t one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren’t very flattering.
“Don’t mess with the system, Anna,” he says bitterly. “We’ve all got our scripts down pat. Kate plays the Martyr. I’m the Lost Cause. And you, you’re the Peacekeeper.”
An heir and a spare: this was a custom that went back to my ancestors in England. It sounded callous—having a subsequent child just in case the first one happens to die—yet it had been eminently practical once. Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every single day: to glue a bad marriage together; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent’s own image.
“Leukemia is a blood cancer.”
Andromeda. The constellation she’s named after tells the story of a princess, who was shackled to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster—punishment for her mother Casseopeia, who had bragged to Poseidon about her own beauty. Perseus, flying by, fell in love with Andromeda and saved her.
I turn my telescope to Barnard’s Loop and M42, glowing in Orion’s sword. Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. Others—blue giants—burn their fuel so fast they shine across great distances, and are easy to see. As they start to run out of fuel, they burn helium, grow even hotter, and explode in a supernova. Supernovas, they’re brighter than the brightest galaxies. I tell her that Vega is a part of Lyra, the lyre that belonged to Orpheus. I tell her about this son of the sun god, whose music charmed animals and softened boulders. A man who loved his wife, Eurydice, so much that he wouldn’t let Death take her away.
It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else’s.
I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be able to do for the daughter I already have.
stare down at Kate’s hips, the iliac crest, where bone marrow is made.
A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.
The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always.
Horseradish? She adds a good wad of the stuff to the eggs, and then pulls orange zest off the spice rack, along with some chili powder, and sprinkles this on as well.
a charged hose was a thick, dead weight.
A bruise is created when there is bleeding in tissues beneath the skin, usually—but not always—the result of a trauma.
They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Perseids, Shooting stars are not stars at all. They’re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is only a trail of debris. the earth’s path crosses this comet’s gritty tail once a year.
I wonder how much the general population of this country knows that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.
The way the Greeks told it, Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth. Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strength and fur and wings. By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire. Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But Prometheus saw his pride and joy shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man again. To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman—Pandora—and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open. Pandora’s curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped. It’s the only weapon we have left to fight the others.
I can’t even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby born with congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: half sympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
choanoflagellates
tarsier
Autonomy, or the idea that any patient over age eighteen has the right to refuse treatment; veracity, which is basically informed consent; fidelity—that is, a health-care provider fulfilling his duties; beneficence, or doing what’s in the best interests of the patient; nonmaleficence—when you can no longer do good, you shouldn’t do harm . . . like performing major surgery on a terminal patient who’s 102 years old; and finally, justice—that no patient should be discriminated against in receiving treatment.”
neutropenic.
greenheads
Here are some of my highlights:
good hard look at why babies get born, they’d conclude that most people have children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn’t one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren’t very flattering.
“Don’t mess with the system, Anna,” he says bitterly. “We’ve all got our scripts down pat. Kate plays the Martyr. I’m the Lost Cause. And you, you’re the Peacekeeper.”
An heir and a spare: this was a custom that went back to my ancestors in England. It sounded callous—having a subsequent child just in case the first one happens to die—yet it had been eminently practical once. Being an afterthought might not sit well with this kid, but the truth is that children are conceived for less than admirable reasons every single day: to glue a bad marriage together; to keep the family name alive; to mold in a parent’s own image.
“Leukemia is a blood cancer.”
Andromeda. The constellation she’s named after tells the story of a princess, who was shackled to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster—punishment for her mother Casseopeia, who had bragged to Poseidon about her own beauty. Perseus, flying by, fell in love with Andromeda and saved her.
I turn my telescope to Barnard’s Loop and M42, glowing in Orion’s sword. Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. Others—blue giants—burn their fuel so fast they shine across great distances, and are easy to see. As they start to run out of fuel, they burn helium, grow even hotter, and explode in a supernova. Supernovas, they’re brighter than the brightest galaxies. I tell her that Vega is a part of Lyra, the lyre that belonged to Orpheus. I tell her about this son of the sun god, whose music charmed animals and softened boulders. A man who loved his wife, Eurydice, so much that he wouldn’t let Death take her away.
It is so easy to presume that while your own world has ground to an absolute halt, so has everyone else’s.
I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be able to do for the daughter I already have.
stare down at Kate’s hips, the iliac crest, where bone marrow is made.
A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.
The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always.
Horseradish? She adds a good wad of the stuff to the eggs, and then pulls orange zest off the spice rack, along with some chili powder, and sprinkles this on as well.
a charged hose was a thick, dead weight.
A bruise is created when there is bleeding in tissues beneath the skin, usually—but not always—the result of a trauma.
They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Perseids, Shooting stars are not stars at all. They’re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on, when we see one, is only a trail of debris. the earth’s path crosses this comet’s gritty tail once a year.
I wonder how much the general population of this country knows that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.
The way the Greeks told it, Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth. Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strength and fur and wings. By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire. Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But Prometheus saw his pride and joy shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man again. To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman—Pandora—and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open. Pandora’s curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped. It’s the only weapon we have left to fight the others.
I can’t even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby born with congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: half sympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
choanoflagellates
tarsier
Autonomy, or the idea that any patient over age eighteen has the right to refuse treatment; veracity, which is basically informed consent; fidelity—that is, a health-care provider fulfilling his duties; beneficence, or doing what’s in the best interests of the patient; nonmaleficence—when you can no longer do good, you shouldn’t do harm . . . like performing major surgery on a terminal patient who’s 102 years old; and finally, justice—that no patient should be discriminated against in receiving treatment.”
neutropenic.
greenheads