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For a long time, I was sick The transplant nearly failed, and then, inexplicably, I began the long steep cliht years sincenot even Dr Chance can understand He thinks it is a combination of the ATRA and the arsenic therapy--so delayed effect--but I know better It is that soo, and Anna took my place
Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to co for us
Then onein the house, down to the last shrunken raisin and graharocery store My father paid a bill or two I sat down to watch TV and watched an old I Love Lucy and started to laugh
Immediately, I felt like I had defiled a shrine I clappedbeside ht it was funny, too"
See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded
I wonder howtime, ere close to Ca If she understands that the reason we don't see them anymore is because it just plain hurt too ered in the spaces between the words, like the s
I wonder if she was at Jesse's graduation from the police academy, if she knows that he won a citation fro bust I wonder if she knew that Daddy fell deep into a bottle after she left, and had to claw his way out I wonder if she knows that, now, I teach children how to dance That every ti into plies, I think of us
She still takes me by surprise Like nearly a year after her death, when my mother cah school graduation We sat down at the kitchen table together, shoulder to shoulder, trying not to rins that there was so from the photo
And then, as if we'd conjured her, the last picture was of Anna It had been that long since we'd used the ca out one hand toward the photographer, trying to get whoever it was to stop taking her picture
Myat Anna until the sun set, until we hadfroe on her bikini Until we couldn't be sure ere seeing her clearly anymore
My mother let me have that picture of Anna But I didn't frame it; I put it into an envelope and sealed it and stuffed it far back into a corner drawer of a filing cabinet It's there, just in case one of these days I start to lose her
Therewhen I wake up and her face isn't the first thing I see Or a lazy August afternoon when I can't quite recall anyht shoulder Maybe one of these days, I will not be able to listen to the sound of snow falling and hear her footsteps
When I start to feel this way I go into the bathroom and I lift up my shirt and touch the white lines of ht the stitches see inside h o
MY
SISTER'S
KEEPER
JODI PICOULT
A READERS CLUB GUIDE
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for discussion for Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book
Many fine books froton Square Press feature Readers Club Guides For a co, or to read the Guides online, visit BookClubReadercom
A CONVERSATION WITH JODI PICOULT
Q: Your novels are incredibly relevant because they deal with topics that are a part of the national dialogue Stener babies" are issues that the medical community (and the political community) seems to be torn about Why did you choose this subject for My Sister's Keeper? Did writing this novel change any of your views in this area?
A: I cah the back door of a previous one, Second Glance While researching eugenics for that book, I learned that the A dried up in the 1930s when the Nazis began to explore racial hygiene too--used to be housed in Cold Spring Harbor, New York Guess who occupies the same space today? The Huenics" This was just too much of a coincidence for -edge science we're on the brink of exploding into was siraain, you've got science that is only as ethical as the people who are researching and iain, in the wake of such intense scientific advance by the wayside are the emotions involved in the case-by-case scenarios I heard about a couple in A that was a bone- froiven to the sister, who is still (several years later) in remission But I started to wonderwhat if she ever, sadly, goes out of remission? Will the boy feel responsible? Will he wonder if the only reason he was born was because his sister was sick? When I started to look more deeply at the faht cause an ieralds I personally aood it can to do simply dismiss it However, clearly, it's a slippery slope, and soed down in the ethics behind it and the details of the science that they forget cos and emotions and hopes and fearslike Anna and her fa to be forced to think about these issues within a few years, so why not first in fiction?
Q: In Jesse, you've done an a inality Your ability to transcend gender lines in your writing is see fro for you to do?
A: I have to tell you--writing Jesse is thetime Maybe at heart I've alanted to be a seventeen-year-old juvenile delinquent, but for whatever reason, it was just an absolute lark to take soive him voice It's always more fun to pretend to be someone you aren't, for whatever reason--whether that means male, or thirteen, or neurotic, or suicidal, or any of a dozen other first-person narrators I've created Whenever I try on a male voice--like Jesse's or Ca overcoat It's cobut if I'ot on underneath
Q: On page 190, Jesse observes, while re to China, that "Darkness, you know, is relative" What does this sentih Jesse, who in some ways is one of the least reflective characters in the novel?
A: Well, that's exactly why it has to be Jesse who says it To Jesse, whatever injustices he thinks he's suffered growing up will always pale to the Great Injustice of his sister being sick He can't win, plain and simple, so he doesn't bother to try When you read Jesse, you think you see exactly what you're getting: a kid who's gone rotten to the core But I'd argue that in his case, you're dealing with an onionsomeone whose reality is several layers away from what's on the surface The question isn't whether Jesse's bad, it's what made him that way in the first place and whether that's really who he is, or just a facade he uses to protect a softer self froreater disappointment
Q: How did you choose which quotes would go at the beginning of each section? Milton, Shakespeare, D H Lawrence--are these some of your favorite authors, or did you have other reasons for choosing them?
A: I suppose I could say that all I ever read are the Masters, and that these quotes just popped out ofof the sections are ones that I searched for, diligently I was looking for allusions to fire, flashes, stars--all iuratively burning itself out
Q: Sisterhood--and siblinghood, for that matter--is a central concept in this work Why did you make Isobel and Julia twins? Does this plot point somehow correspond with the codependence between Kate and Anna? What did you hope to reveal about sisterhood through this story?
A: I think there is a relationship between sisters that is unlike other sibling bonds It's a combination of competition and fierce loyalty, which is certainly evident in both sets of sisters in this book The reason Izzy and Julia are twins is because they started out as one erew, their differences becaenetic connections, but unlike Izzy and Julia, they aren't able to separate frorow into distinct individuals I wanted to hold up both examples to the reader, so that they could see the difference between two sisters who started out as one and diverged, and two sisters who started out distinct froled
Q: Anyone who has watched a loved one die (and anyone with a heart in their chest) would bedepiction of sickness and death that is presented in this story Was it difficult to ienerate the realistic details?
A: It's always hard to irief, because naturally you can't help but think of your own fa the book, I spoke to children who had cancer, as well as their parents--to better capture what it felt like to live day by day andspecter of what ht be just around the corner To a lesser extent, I also drew on my own experience, as a parent with a child who faced a series of surgeries: when nosed with bilateral cholesteaton tumors that will eventually burrow into your brain and kill you, if you don't man