I had previously read Nineteen Minutes for my high school book club, and I wasn’t overly impressed with it. The ending really ruined the book for me. Not so much the fact that Josie killed her boyfriend, more the fact that she had to go to jail for ten years, and her mom remarried and got pregnant again. To me, this looked like her attempt to replace her incarcerated daughter, and recitfy the mistakes she made as a parent the first time around. I just hated the ending.
Now, a good friend of mine convinced me to give Picoult another shot, and read My Sister’s Keeper. It started out perfectly. The story was touching. The situation was original, and I really thought I was going to come away pleased with the experience. Unfortunately, Picoult ruined it again in the last ten pages. She sacrificed the integrity of the whole story to create a surprising ‘Hollywood’ ending. I was angry. As a literary character, Anna deserved better. Everything that she went through, everything that she put her family through, it didn’t matter. By creating her shocking plot twist, Picoult managed to make the entire buildup irrelevant. It was one of the worst endings to a book that I have ever read.
Maybe, I just don’t get it. So many people love her work, and love this book in particular, but it just didn’t do it for me. I’m my opinion, Kate wanted to die. That was the direction everything was going in. I feel that as a writer sometimes your characters decide how their story will end. The novel would have been great if Kate dies a peaceful death, and Anna and the rest of her family finally get to move on with their lives. Anna and her family had given Kate life. Kate would have relished the opportunity to repay her family, and give them all a chance for a full life. A death, a funeral, and a reflection from each family member. That would have been the perfect way to end this novel.
What the Dickens? 