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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.
Review:
In a small New Hampshire town lives a family of four: Dad is a cop; Mom was once a professional pastry chef who now spends her time taking care of two daughters. Amelia is a somewhat troubled preteen; Willow is a 5-year-old with a rare genetic disease, osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), type III. And everything else about this family and everything about this novel spins back to that genetic mutation: Willow's... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) bones don't form properly. By the time she was born, she had seven broken bones, which had been seen on ultrasound; four more got broken during the delivery; and by now, five years later, her whole family speaks the language of Willow's vulnerable bones. Everyone knows the sound and the look of another one breaking. This is why Amelia feels left out and angry and self-hating by turns, and this is why the mother's days are a constant challenge of caretaking and advocacy and worry. And this is what's so good about Jodi Picoult's "Handle With Care." When I was doing my residency in pediatrics (at the same children's hospital where Willow goes for her experimental therapy, which may strengthen her bones but may also have bad side effects years down the line), I was awed by the parents of children with chronic diseases like OI. They seemed to me a fascinating, heroic and almost completely invisible part of the population, recognizing one another, telling their astounding stories, "going to medical school the hard way," as we sometimes called it. Why were there not novels and movies and ballads to celebrate their love and their determination and their very particular side of the story? Well, here's such a novel. It's well written, it's conscientiously researched and, most important, it presents a character who is a child instead of a disability personified. With her strong personality and weak bones, Willow is a 5-year-old who knows too much. She's jealous of what other children can do. The action of "Handle With Care" begins when Willow's mother, Charlotte, decides to bring a suit against her own best friend, the obstetrician who took care of her during the pregnancy. It's a "wrongful life" suit, arguing that if the diagnosis of osteogenesis imperfecta had been made at the first prenatal ultrasound, she would have been able to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy at 18 weeks. Instead, the suit argues, the obstetrician missed certain subtle signs, and that diagnosis wasn't made till the 27-week ultrasound revealed those seven broken bones. By that time, Charlotte and her husband were unwilling to consider a late-term abortion. Everyone around Charlotte is opposed to this lawsuit. Her husband won't have any part of it. Her older daughter is destroyed by it, inside and out, and loses her best friend, the obstetrician's daughter. Willow herself is devastated, correctly understanding that her mother is claiming that it would have been better if she had never been born. The organized osteogenesis imperfecta community is furious. When Charlotte takes her daughter to an OI convention, Willow is overjoyed to be in a group where she's normal, but finds that her mother is a pariah. Even Charlotte's lawyer, a young woman on a quest to locate her birth mother, doesn't like the smell of this wrongful-birth suit. With the deck stacked against Charlotte, it's sometimes hard to feel much sympathy for her. And yet, this mother is caught between the genuine love she feels for her child, to whom she has devoted herself completely, and the anger she feels at what has happened to her life: "What if it was someone's fault?" she thinks. "How could I admit to anyone — much less myself — that you were not only the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me ... but also the most exhausting, the most overwhelming?" Yes, the money she hopes to win could buy her daughter the best wheelchairs, the best summer camps, but for the sake of wringing that money out of the system, she destroys her closest friend, alienates her older daughter, horrifies her husband and damages the child she's trying to help. You don't have to be a physician, with a somewhat jaundiced view of the personal-injury tort system, to wish Charlotte could see what every other character can see — that she is creating a new and terrible tragedy. Charlotte's motivation for the lawsuit, which will endanger if not ruin everything she loves, is that she needs money to take proper care of her daughter. I couldn't help remembering my old days at the hospital and the families who would make their way down from New Hampshire, a state notoriously limited in the services it provided to children with disabilities. Those parents all made the same dark joke, quoting the Revolutionary War slogan on their license plates: "Live free or die." "Handle With Care" is a great read, with strong characters, an exciting lawsuit to pull you along and really good use of the medical context. Picoult does a terrific job of evoking OI and its peculiarities — from the likelihood that parents might be accused of child abuse (because of fractures that don't quite "make sense") to the incessant push and pull of wanting a child to experience kindergarten friendships, Disney World and ice skating, while worrying constantly that another fragile bone will break. Reviewed by Perri Klass, a professor of journalism and pediatrics at New York University and the author of 'The Mercy Rule', Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:
"In her customary fashion, Picoult probes these sensitive issues with empathy and compassion." Booklist
Review:
"bound to touch hearts and open minds to a little-known affliction." Charlotte Observer
Review:
"Picoult proves once again how powerful a force she is in the world of fiction." Bookreporter.com
Synopsis:
Handle with Care explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, should a parent have the right to consider termination? Bestselling author Picoult explores a timely yet controversial issue in her latest novel.
Jodi Picoult received an A.B. in creative writing from Princeton and a master's degree in education from Harvard. The recipient of the 2003 New England Book Award for her entire body of work, she is the author of fourteen novels, including The Tenth Circle, Vanishing Acts, and My Sister's Keeper, for which she received the American Library Association's Margaret Alexander Edwards Award. Recently, she penned several issues of Wonder Woman for DC Comics. She liv
The Book Resort, July 10, 2009 (view all comments by The Book Resort)
Tissues... check! Cucumber slices...in the fridge! Chocolate... ya better believe it! Pure Cashmere Throw Blanket ~ Natural 3 Ply....check! Hot Cocoa...oh, yeah! Chocolate...
Jodi Picoult’s latest, Handle With Care, is the ideal escape~ a riveting page~turner of a novel, but you must have chocolate & tissues handy.The book is written as a series of chapters directed to Willow as an explanation to her of why certain behaviors were exhibited by the person speaking, although occasionally explanations are directed to the reader instead. Sound a bit confusing? Actually it is a skillful way to impart the story & have it not be run-of-the-mill in a powerfully inconceivable situation.Until you become accustomed to the flow, you may become distracted by some awkward sentence construction. Once you are in the groove, you will see how this advances the plot.Picoult introduces us to unforgettable characters & her ornate dialogue only enriches this heart-wrenching drama.Picoult's 16th novel, Handle With Care, is a must for Picoult fans & will definitely garner even more to the gifted sphere that is Jodi Picoult.
Book clubs here's one to add to the list.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Ami Hansen, March 12, 2009 (view all comments by Ami Hansen)
As a fan of Picoult, I look forward to her books. This book measures up there with all the other favorites. This book makes you wonder, "is there a fix for things that are broken?" Broken...the them of the book makes the reader really look into themselves to find the answer. I don't think we realize how many things in our lives that might be broken, and need a little TLC.
A superb book by Picoult, a book that makes you question what is right, wrong, and well...what just is. I can't recommend this book enough to other readers, it will make you question all sorts of aspects in your life. Just wonderful!
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C Horne, March 4, 2009 (view all comments by C Horne)
Jodi Picoult...
...does it again! A great book, stimulating and emotional. It is not leisure reading by any means. But if you have read Picoult's other books, you already know she incorporates tough issues in her novels. You won't be disappointed.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (3 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
"Review"
by Booklist,
"In her customary fashion, Picoult probes these sensitive issues with empathy and compassion."
"Review"
by Charlotte Observer,
"bound to touch hearts and open minds to a little-known affliction."
"Review"
by Bookreporter.com,
"Picoult proves once again how powerful a force she is in the world of fiction."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
Handle with Care explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a fetus who will be disabled, should a parent have the right to consider termination? Bestselling author Picoult explores a timely yet controversial issue in her latest novel.
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