Handle with Care: A Novel
by Jodi Picoult
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jodi PicoultEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-03
ISBN: 0743296419
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Atria Books
Book Reviews of Handle with Care: A Novel
Book Review: A Rewrite of "My Sister's Keeper"?
Summary: 1 Stars
I just don't understand the reason this book was written. "My Sister's Keeper" already tells the story of the devastating effects of one child's tragic illness on a family. I would think it might be to try out a different ending if the ending of "Handle with Care" were not just as annoyingly and ludicrously contrived and so similar to the ending of "My Sister's Keeper." What's wrong with an ending that's a somewhat natural development and conclusion to what's been going on? Write a story that tells how another obnoxious mother sets out a course to completely tear her family apart as well as her closest friendship, let her succeed with her plan, and then in the conclusion just completely reverse everything including providing a happy ending between a husband, wife, and another daughter that is almost impossible to believe and then reverse that by "killing off" the daughter which everything else that's been done was supposed to save? No! Not for me! That's just too much reader and plot manipulation. It's not that I don't like surprises and unusual and unexpected twists in the climax, but I agree with Kurt Vonnegut that there should be something that comes before that prepares the reader even for that.
I think it's a good idea to make people aware of horrible illnesses like osteogenesis imperfecta and the unimaginable struggles families dealing with it have to endure. I want to be compassionate to people in those situations, and do not ask any author to let me off the hook in that regard, but by the time I finished reading 2 books almost identical by the same author, I was zoning out from all the excessive medical terms and countless detailed descriptions of yet another medical crisis in the life of the affected child. I understand that the families of children in these circumstances get no break from the countless crises and that there are no easy answers, but why are such "easy" solutions given for the siblings whose lives seem like they're ruined from the constant focus on the sick child to find out in the conclusion that they're almost overnight made all better.
Not only all that, but the melodrama and hokeyness are overpowering to the point that I would rather read the genealogies in the Old Testament than start another Jodi Picoult book. An ingredient in Charlotte's "baking more concentrated than any extract, . . . it was regret, and it rose when one least expected." If she is so full of regret, why doesn't she stop her ridiculous lawsuit before it destroys everyone in her life instead of waiting until she wins it and then virtuously not cashing the settlement check?
How touching it isn't that Sean goes to such romantic extravagant lengths to declare his love for Charlotte, but she just can't say it back to him except through baking pastries for him that eventually get too big to fit in his mailbox. Give me a break already!!!!
"I don't want you to ever suffer another break. Especially one between you and me, because that might never set properly." Gag!!! Didn't Willow prove that point when she almost bled to death from cutting herself?
Piper's "breath smelled of coffee and remorse"? Please!! Why remorse? She's done nothing to feel remorse for.
Are there really conventions like the one in this book for people with OI where they are told how to have sex and practice putting condoms on bananas?
Adam's hands touched Amelia's shoulder blades "on the spot [Willow had] once broken, on the place where [Amelia would] have wings if [she] had been born an angel." Well, none of us is born an angel, right? Not even Willow. Isn't that the point?
"Sarah had gotten part of her sex talk wrong: it wasn't fractures you had to worry about, it was dissolving--losing yourself willingly, blissfully, in someone else." How touching!!!
Charlotte lay in bed making a list of what she knew about divorce.
"Words got in the way. The things we felt the hardest--like what it was like to have a boy touch you as if you were made of light, or what it meant to be the only person in the room who wasn't noticed---weren't sentences; they were knots in the wood of our bodies, places where our blood flowed backward."
"Crust dissolved on my tongue like a memory."
"I had lost sense of everything but Charlotte. I could have told you how many inches away from my leg hers was beneath the table. I could have told you how the curls of her hair caught in the candlelight and held on to it."
"What about when medical advances made it possible to see your child's potential beauty, or her level of compassion?"
The judge lets Sean talk directly to his wife, clears the courtroom of everyone else, and then has a marital counseling session for them instead of continuing with the trial? Amelia correctly calls it melodrama in the next chapter.
To prevent meringue from weeping, "Do not bake while your heart is breaking." Just why is Charlotte's heart breaking? Who brought about this whole catastrophe?
"In school we have Hundred Day. Amelia "brought in a hundred chocolate chips. . . . I brought a list of seventy-five bones I've broken and the names of twenty-five more that I haven't."
Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
In addition, the second person telling of the story was off putting and distracting to me. When is Willow supposed to "hear" this? When she's dead at the bottom of the lake? And when did everyone, including the lawyer and the defendant get together and decide to tell Willow even the most intimate details of their sex lives which have nothing to do with her? I understand that Charlottle is a former pastry chef and that baking provides some release for her, but the recipes introducing each section were also distracting to me and just one more example of the triteness I've already said enough about.
There is one moment of comic relief in all this overwhelming schmaltz. "Judge Gellar dyed his hair over the weekend, a deep black Grecian Formula that drew my eyes like a magnet and made him look like an Elvis impersonator. . . . I almost expected him to break out in a resounding chorus of "Burning Love." That's cute!
Summary of Handle with Care: A Novel
Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.
Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.
Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?
Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she's become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.
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