Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 March 2008 20:06:22
I have just finished reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and I loved it, much to my surprise.
The story is about Anna Fitzgerald who is 13 years old and her older sister Kate who has a rare form of leukaemia. Anna was a 'designer baby', genetically selected to be a perfect match for her sister so that she could help with the treatment. The final straw for Anna however is when she is asked to donate a kidney to her dying sister so that a final attempt at a cure can be made. Anna makes the decision that she has had enough of being treated like a medical guinea pig and applies for medical emancipation from her parents so that it can stop.
This is a clever book, each chapter being narrated by different people involved in the story; Anna, her sister Kate, their brother Jesse, their parents, the lawyer and the guardian ad litem and just when you start agreeing with one individuals point of view the next chapter makes you see the situation from someone else's perspective. The book raises huge issues about the individual's right to choose, the age at which a child is able to make these decisions and the ethical problems around who is qualified to make decisions regarding medical treatment and the consequences of having designer babies.
I could kind of see the ending coming, although I really hoped that wouldn't end like that and as a result I cried my way through the last couple of chapters. A cleverly written and though-provoking book.