Friday, March 2, 2012

Year 3 - Day 62 - March 2

This is the Jodi Picoult book for this year. When I first read the summary a couple months ago, I didn't think I'd like it too much. I wound up enjoying it way more than I thought I would. The story basically centers around a man on life support and his two children who disagree on the next step. In all of her stories, various narrators take turns giving their point of view. Since the one character is on life support, we learn about him through his memoirs. He is a naturalist who at one point went off to live in the wilderness with wolves. Yes, wolves. He got the wolves to accept him as a member and let them live with him. It sounds crazy, but there really is a guy who did that! Jodi Picoult interviewed him and learned a lot. That guy even wrote a book (The Man Who Lives With Wolves) so I think that piece helped me enjoy the book. I didn't read that book yet but the fact that it happened brought it into the realm of possibility for me. If I didn't know it was possible, my annoyance at that part of the storyline would have made me not like the book. Overall, a decent read and it does make you think about a "What If" question as all her books do. In most "What to do?" life support stories (in movies or the nightly news), the opposing parties have different claims in the "next-of-kin" chain. Maybe spouse vs parents or kid vs parents or kid vs spouse, whatever. When it's two kids who sort of have equal say but maybe not really, that changes things. 

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