Monday, March 08, 2010

Picoult-a-thon: The End

(Explanatory post.)

I will try to mark spoilers and make them easy to skip if you want to. I was going to go all 2002 high-tech and make the text color match the background color so that you'd have to highlight to read them, but then I remember about how RSS readers sometimes strip formatting, so I won't. Silly technology. Fix yourself!

So. I'm done with the book. Along with my thoughts about this ending in particular, I want to talk a little bit about twist ending in general. I've often called Picoult's endings such things as "cheap shots" and "ripoffs" and "contrived", and I've reached the point where sometimes when I'm reading one of her books, I read the ending first so that it doesn't infuriate me when I get to it. Obviously that wasn't an option for this project, which turned out to be a good thing, and here's why:

This twist ending was not a cheap shot. It was not a ripoff and it wasn't contrived. It was the thing that I thought most logically should happen, based on the text, and I just didn't give Picoult enough credit (I've been hurt before, see); I assumed that she would have to go off in an illogical direction at the end. So now the interesting part: I didn't just cruise through this book quickly, enjoying it as a mindless-but-intriguing time-passer; I read carefully. I looked for clues, and I found them. Everything I needed in order to not be shocked by the ending was there in the text. So now I have to wonder: a couple of true cheap-shot endings aside (more on those in a second), would this same thing have happened in other Picoult books, if I'd read more carefully? I paid more attention to Salem Falls, for example, than I usually do, and I didn't feel ripped off at the end because I thought that might have been going to happen. (Sorry I can't go into more detail, here, but you never know if you might want to read these books yourself, and you might not be a freak like me who reads the end first some of the time.)

So this leads me to believe that there are two or three different kinds of Picoult endings:

1. Books where the endings might seem contrived but aren't if you pay attention; see above.
2. Books where the endings truly are contrived and truly are a rip-off -- My Sister's Keeper, for example, and Handle With Care -- books where the ending is a total departure from the rest of the story, books that remind me of that one short story I wrote for tenth-grade English where this guy had AIDS* and I got twelve pages into what was supposed to be a seven-to-fourteen-page story about his friendship with a girl before I realized there was no way I could write it the way I'd originally intended to do in the allotted space remaining so I killed the guy off in a car accident and called it a twist ending. My English teacher was suitably unimpressed, and I know how he feels because that's exactly how I feel at the end of a book where the ending seems to be just thrown in to make a splash (or cut the story shorter) but makes no point otherwise. *If you'd been fifteen in 1990 with an overly inflated perception of your own writing ability, chances are you'd have written an AIDS story too. Trust me on this.
3. Books whose endings may or may not Play Fair, but they at least make you think about the book, and maybe even a major life issue, in a different light. I'm thinking about Tenth Circle and Plain Truth, two of my favorite Picoults (after Nineteen Minutes). It might be a bit of a cheap shot -- or it might not, and I'll never know because I can't wipe that part of my memory and reread the book to find out -- but at least it's a cheap shot with a point. (You might argue that the end of Handle With Care qualifies here too, but I would argue back.)

In sum: this wasn't a perfect book. The writing was a bit wobbly in the Jacob sections, as Katie and I both noted, and there were a couple of grating factual difficulties. But overall, I enjoyed it and can recommend it.

Katie, thank you for doing this project with me. I know we're both busy people, but I had a lot of fun. (Yes, I have homework and kids, but you have a full-time job, so I think it all evens out. And I only had to stay up till 1:30 once this weekend to catch up on my trig homework. :) )

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Picoult-a-thon: Day... whatever

(Explanatory post.)

I, um, sort of stopped paying attention to pages and I'm almost done with the book now so I had to stop and update before I finished the whole thing. This reminds me of how I feel when I have a package of something delicious sitting next to me while I'm studying and I look up from my textbook to find that the package has somehow emptied itself while I was engrossed in a world full of trigonometric identities or Deaf cultural values, except without the Oreo chocolate in the corners of my mouth. (Note: I have not done one single problem of my trig homework for the weekend yet. Good thing it's a rainy Saturday, right?)

Can I just break up the flow here to say how much I love books? Ever since I was a little girl I've been fascinated by the realization that there are entire worlds and lives and emotions, transformed into ink and printed on paper squeezed between two covers, just sitting there waiting for us to open them. It used to make me a little dizzy, to look at all the rows and rows of worlds in the library. And now, here I am, thirty-five years old and very much a citizen of the Real Grown-Up World with taxes and children and jobs and responsibilities, and stuff, and I am itching to open the book that's sitting mere yards from me, to find out what happened. Even though nothing really did. 

SPOILERS GALORE if you haven't read this book yet. Read it first; it won't take any longer than polishing off a few dozen bags of Oreos.

OK. So now the trial's in full swing. My love-loathe relationship for Picoult is never more present than it is during the court trials that inevitably take up the last 150 pages of her books. On the one hand, this is where the rubber meets the road, and you're finding out what happens and watching characters' reactions to things. On the other hand, that's a whole lot of talking and a considerable amount of either a) fresh infodump or b) reiterations of stuff we already knew from before, and that can get tedious. That aside, at this point I can't help but think that Picoult is setting us up to think that Jacob killed Jess. He keeps dodging around the issue, and there was that "I didn't hurt her"/"I didn't mean to hurt her" bit. Which, if I'm right about that, would mean according to the laws of Picoultdynamics that Jacob couldn't have done it (in his mind, remember, he "hurt" her when he dragged her body down the stairs), and maybe Kat was right all along and it was Theo... or Jess actually did just die of a fall, which is where I'm leaning now. So yes, you read that right: a last-minute change in my PPCSTE prediction. I hope I don't come to regret it.

And now if you'll excuse me there's this really important trial going on on my end table and I have to go pay attention to it.

Picoult-a-thon: Day 4, to p. 304

(Explanatory post.)

I confess that I didn't take notes during this section, so I don't have a lot of detailed things to post about it. A few random thoughts:

Picoult's lawyers are always quirky. In House Rules, the lawyer is 28, a former farrier, suffering from a bit of a crush on Jacob's fortyish mother, and woefully inexperienced at practicing law. This is sometimes funny and usually harrowing. Good job on that, Ms. Picoult.

Not so good: more jarring non-literalness from Jacob during his turns at narration. I think it was technically after page 304 (I'm at the point where I just want to keep reading -- damn the blog updates! full speed ahead!), but there's one time when Jacob narrates about "a lick of cold air" that "wraps around" his ankles. I'm not saying that there aren't people with Asperger's who could think in those terms; I'm just saying that when you have a character who, when asked "Can you tell me your name?" replies, "Yes," with no sense of belligerence or irony, you can't have him rhapsodizing about ankle-wrapping licks of cold air a few pages later. This is definitely turning out to be the one major weak point in this story for me: Picoult can't set aside her own style long enough to let Jacob's voice through.

I waver occasionally, but my PPCSTE prediction is still the same, with the added angle that yes, I think Jacob did set up a crime scene as a forensics experiment, whatever else he may have been doing with Jess and her body. UNLESS -- unless this is all what she wants us to think, to throw us off the trail. I most certainly can not drink from the cup that is in front of you!* As Katie says, she's doing this just to mess with us.

*Unless, of course, I've spent the last five years building up an immunity to Picoulticane powder.**
 **I do realize that I may well be the only person on planet Earth who is dorky enough to find this humorous.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Picoult-a-thon: Day 2, pages 76ish-152

In case you're looking at this post with furrowed brow, thinking, "the heck?!", I'll recap: Katie and I are blogging about a new book (House Rules) by an author we both like/loathe (Jodi Picoult). Here's the first explanatory post in the series.

* * * * * * 
Ooh, so many possibilities are emerging now. To summarize, we know that Jess is dead; we know that Theo saw her right before she disappeared; we know that Jacob came home from an appointment with her in serious distress; we know that he moved her body and set it up so that the police would find it a few days later; we know that the cops suspect Jess's jerk of a boyfriend. Picoult is setting it up, though, like Jess fell and Jacob cleaned up and moved her body, perhaps (as Katie mentioned) thinking that he's "taking care of his brother" (House Rule number 5) by covering up for him. It also appears that Jacob's forensics obsession is at play here; has he set the scene up as a test for the local PD? It begins to look that way. This all still plays into my original PPCSTE prediction: we're supposed to think Jacob is innocent, but he did it. But could she be trying to make us think that? It's a very Vizzini vs. Westley kind of circle of doubt I've got going here.

Complaints:

• I hate to nitpick, but neurotransmitters don't transmit by "raging through [one's] bloodstream", Ms. Picoult. They're made in neurons, and then they hang out between neurons waiting to, you know, transmit impulses. Maybe he has agonists in his bloodstream. Cripes, I'm such a nerd. 


• Also, after all my ranting about how writers shouldn't show us the chickens in my last Picoult post, I really think in a crime/mystery/whatevergenrethisis novel, it's extremely unfair to have the protagonist and the narrator hide pertinent information from us. That is Not Playing By The Rules. Jacob and his mysterious metal "object" from the crime scene alllllmost made me throw the book, but not quite. I did give in and roll my eyes a few times. I'm going to add a feature where I guess the nature of the "object" until it's revealed, though. I think we're supposed to think it's a knife, so that's too easy (again with the Vizzini vs. Westley scene), so I'm thinking it's Jess's iPod.

Otherwise, good reading. Better than the first 76ish pages, I think.

Just to clarify, my take on the Picoult-Patented Cheap-Shot Twist Ending at this point is:
It looks like Jess fell and Jacob moved her body. The fact that this is so cut-and-dried so early on in the game makes me distrust it, and I hold to my original prediction, which is that Jacob killed her, for some reason having to do with taking care of his brother.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Picoult-a-thon: Day 1, pages 1-76ish

I had forgotten how quickly seventy-six pages of a novel goes. THAT IS SO SAD. Realizing that I can have forgotten anything about the 100% pure awesome that is losing myself in a good book almost makes me question my priorities and toss this whole 'further education' bit out the window.

OK, not really.

I digress. For those just joining us, my friend Katie and I are liveblogging (except not exactly, you know, live) Jodi Picoult's House Rules. Full explanation is here. And now, on to the snark:

There's really not much. This is a pretty decent book and the things I don't like about it aren't snarkable things, or maybe I'm not in a snarky mood, but here goes:

1. The most glaring issue for me so far (full disclosure: I'm a few pages into the second 76-page section, and it gets better) is that Jacob's voice (remember he's the boy with Asperger's) just doesn't ring true in his first-person sections. For a person who's so literal -- and people with Aspergers definitely tend to be literal -- his thoughts contain an awful lot of metaphors and idioms. It felt much, much more like someone else explaining Jacob's thoughts -- which of course it is -- and it took me out of the story a bit.
2. Also: Like any novel that has a complicated medical or psychological issue at its center, the narration tends to be a bit infodumpy and advocate-ish. Some of the text reads like a Good Housekeeping article rather than a page-turner of a novel by a bestselling author. It's kind of unavoidable, I know, when the author has to introduce her readers to An Issue while simultaneously showing how her characters' lives are affected by it, but there it is. I noticed the same thing about Picoult's previous novel, Handle With Care (which got thrown across the room at the end. Hey, guys, this could get exciting here).

Other than that, I don't have many complaints, and I'm eager to keep reading, which is a good sign, right?

Interesting note: the mother (Emma) is an advice columnist. This is a good job for someone in a novel, I think. I remember liking it when I read a kidlit book (was it called Dear Lola?) about a parentless family whose oldest brother keeps the family in food and lodging by writing an advice column, way back when I actually was a kid (the fact that I'm not one now certainly doesn't keep me from reading kidlit, although college unfortunately does). And then there was a recent Jacqueline Mitchard novel, The Breakdown Lane, about an advice columnist whose teenage son takes over her column when she develops MS. (I really enjoyed this book, but unfortunately I've just told you almost everything I can remember about it. Getting old is sad.)

If Jacob at some point takes over his mother's column, though, I will be quite surprised.

Also: I totally called the crime scene diagnosis before Jacob did. Unfortunately, this is because it made the news a year or two ago when a man died in a similar way not far from here.

Theo (younger, neurotypical brother) is developing into quite a creepy, disturbed character. Not your average sullen overlooked teen, he feels compelled to break into people's houses and handle their stuff when they're not home. Which -- oh -- brings me to one other thing I didn't like: thanks to contextual clues, it's pretty obvious to a reader with brains that he does this because he wants to feel like he's in a normal family and a normal home. Yet Picoult has to tell us that, during one of Theo's first-person sections, instead of letting us figure it out for ourselves. Now I don't go into a Jodi Picoult novel expecting, say, the finesse and subtlety of Kazuo Ishiguro, but give me a little credit for having a brain, please? It reminds me of the film version of The Music Man (which, by the way, I mostly utterly adore), during "Pickalittle Talkalittle": we see the matronly women in their feathered hats standing around gossiping, behaving like busybody hens, even singing in a chickenlike way, and then just to be sure and also to insult the audience's intelligence, the camera cuts to some convenient hens pecking at the ground nearby. HEY AUDIENCE! DID YOU NOTICE THEY ARE BEHAVING KIND OF LIKE HENS? Graah. Don't show us the chickens, writers.

And now I will close with my new prediction regarding the PPCSTE (that's Picoult-Patented Cheap-Shot Twist Ending, of course):
I'm still leaning toward Jacob as the guilty party, and it will have something to do with Emma's family's House Rule Number 5, which states, "Take care of your brother; he's the only one you've got." (hence the title, see?)

Picoult-a-thon: Before I Begin

As mentioned in my first post, Katie and I are doing a co-project (because "joint project" just sounds wrong) where we will be reading through Jodi Picoult's new book, House Rules, and doing a Very Special Kind Of Review Which May Include Snarking (or may not. It could be an awesome book. Sometimes they are. Nineteen Minutes, I am looking at you.). Why this book? Well, it's almost kind of an inside joke between Katie and myself, but not quite: Picoult is an author with whom we each have a kind of love/loathe relationship (I could be wrong but I think on my part it's more love than loathe, and on Katie's it's more the reverse), and one day not long ago we were chatting about how we should read Picoult's next book together and blog about our predictions for the obligatory Twist Ending (if you've ever read Picoult, you know that every ending must twist; it's the first law of Picoultdynamics). So here I am, and there she is or will be, and I'm out of parentheses at present so I had better get down to business.

I haven't started the book yet. It's 532 pages and Katie and I are going to try to read it in a week even though I have school and children and all kinds of other fun things that fill my days (verifying trigonometric identities makes my brain smile but it does cut into one's reading time -- oops, now I have a parenthesis deficit). So unless my calculator is wrong, that comes out to exactly 76 pages per day. It's as if the publisher knew we would do this, right? I will make a possibly heroic effort to keep up.

The jacket blurb tells me that this is a book about a mother of two sons: Jacob, who has Aspergers and is SERIOUSLY into crime-scene analysis, and Theo, who, reading between the lines, been completely neglected and shunted to the side by his single mother in favor of his older brother's issues. Somebody kills somebody, and some people think that the older crime-obsessed son with Aspergers did it. (There are better summaries just about everywhere, possibly including the wall of a stall in your nearest gas station restroom, but that'll do for now because have you seen the timestamp on this post? -- GAH. More parenthesis debt.)

Without further ado, my first prediction re: the twist ending, based on my not-insubstantial experience with Picoult's previous works: We will be set up to believe that Jacob is innocent and that his brother Theo is the killer, but in fact Jacob will be GUILTY. (Don't worry, that's absolutely not a spoiler. It'll probably change at least once or twice before I totally spoil the end for you.) (GAH!)