Which books have you read? I really enjoy Picoult, though I have to admit that I wasn't able to finish her latest book. I like the way she deals with real issues and real people and doesn't create easy solutions.

She's thought provoking and I'm sure a natural for book club discussions.

The only one I read was the one about sisters, don't remember the title. I confess I couldn't put it down but I felt manipulated afterward. She engaged you so in the outcome of the story that you didn't really question the characters. I didn't really belive the parents in that story, there was no depth to their feelings, especially the mother.

I've read one out of curiousity. I won't read another. She is the type of author who likes to hammer you with her message. I also had a hard time believing the plot (this was the one about the hollywood dreamboat who marries an archaeologist).

My book club did three, and we did have interesting discussions on the underlying issue, but then some of us rebelled and said we wouldn't read any more. We felt that she is manipulative and heavy-handed. Very "tragedy-movie of the week" and I think her characters are stock...two dimensional.

I respect her as a writer, I don't like reading her books. It's not like she tells me stuff I don't already know. So I give her a pass these days.

I liked a lot of her earlier work, especially Plain Truth and Keeping Faith. However, I really disliked the ending of My Sister's Keeper as I thought she took the easy way out and tied up the ends too nicely. Vanishing Act I thought completely contrived - it felt to me that she wrote a list of what she wanted to put in the book and wrote the story around that. The Tenth Circle (?) was OK but again I thought the story was a bit too pat.

I just finished My Sister's Keeper, and kept being bugged by one question; why does Campbell drive? Without spoiling it for anyone, he has a disability that should keep him from getting behind the wheel. With regards to the ending, I kept asking, why was he driving in the first place?
Book was good, but manipulative.
Jo

Plain Truth is set where I live-and either she didn't do enough research, or she was cavalier about what she discovered, which we found off-putting. If you are setting a book in a real place, then I think you are obligated to find out some basic things about that place and not reorganize the place to suit your story. She doesn't live that far away. If you didn't live here, you wouldn't know, but that made us wonder about her other books.
jojo-in PA, it's not legal to drive in that situation. My DS has a teammate who had to surrender his license when he developed the same disability.

jojo, curious, whats the disability?

arrrrrggggghhhhhh!
this thing drives me nuts. Why doesn't it respect line breaks! I have tried three different ways to space out
"spoiler alert"
so that the actual spoiler doesn't appear in the first part of the message screen and will it let me? NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It doubles and triples up when I want one letter or . per line to push it all down!
So I am forced to produce this rant that will be long enough to push the actual spoiler answer to Cindy's question down far enough so that anyone who wants to read the book unspoiled can do so.
arrrrrgggggghhhhh!

I'm sorry if this doesn't work.....

S
. P
. O
. I
. L
. E
. R
. .
.A
. L
. E
. R
. T
. .
. .
. .

epilepsy

I've given the book to my mil, but I remember a part where campbell talks about ethics and being a lawyer and how he has to respect the letter of the law. So again, WHY DOES HE DRIVE? I wish he knew he shouldn't but did anyway (which makes his ethical attitude go out the window.) Maybe if you go x number of years without an attack you can drive? But then he has one in the courtroom, which makes it a new health risk. Of course, there is the possibility that Julia was driving, but the author doesn't alude to that at all and all other driving references are towards Campbell, Judge and a BMW. I guess I just have to accept the fact that Picoult erred on this one. If so, it is careless and it mars the book.
Jo

Driving laws do vary by state; here it's a year seizure free before one can drive again. That bothered me too.

I like that Picoult deals with issues that real people face. And that her characters are sometimes flawed.

So, why does he drive when he shouldn't? Because real people do often act unwisely.

cc, the easy way is to change the font color to white and then back again after the spoiler is over. That way one can highlight the info with the cursor to see what it says, but otherwise it doesn't appear. Like this Spoiler Alert spoiler infocolor> Spoiler over. Put "font color=white" (without the quotation marks) in the brackets at the beginning and "/font color" in the brackets at the end. A more elegant HTML code exists, but this is easier to remember.

Thanks for all the input. I'm reading the third book in a row by her - first, Perfect Match (didn't like the ending), The Tenth Circle (it was good by not quite what I expected), and am currently reading Salem Falls. So far, all 3 books dealt with either child molestation or rape, so I'm hoping her other books change the topic a bit.

cool. thanks Chris.

In our state, if you have epilepsy, you can drive as long as you have not had a seizure after I think 2 years. These folks are on medication, and the medication has changed their lives greatly over the last decade or so. Now, if he had a seizure in the court room, all bets are off and no he shouldn't be able to drive. Unfortunately, we usually don't know about that until after an accident. I know of elderly folks whose eyesight is horrible. But DMV doesn't keep track of them, and they are an accident waiting to happen (OT sorry)

I've enjoyed her earlier books more. My favorites are "My Sister's Keeper" and "Plain Truth." I'm probably in the minority in likeing the ending to "Sister's Keeper"! I've found the last two especially "Tenth Circle" very disappointing. I'll read her next (due in March I think) but I'll wait til I can get it from the library.

I read where she stated that "The Tenth Circle" she considered her best work. I didn't care for it, as compared to the other two I read/am reading.

smallcoffee,
I am in the minority with you in that I liked the ending of My Sister's Keeper and that book plus Plain Truth are the only two I have even liked.

gbg

I read Plain Truth and found Picoult to be a great storyteller. But, I felt cheated by her ending. As granjan mentioned in her post, I also felt manipulated by Picoult. In an interview in the back of the book it makes mention of "scooby-doo endings". I don't exactly recall the comments made about this statement, but it seems to aptly describe what she did in this book. She did tie up the ending neatly in Plain Truth, (I'm not a big fan of pat endings) and she seemed to do it by omitting some info at the expense of the reader. I've not read any of her other books, so I can't say that this tends to be her style. But, from reading these posts, it seems that it might be.