Book: My Sister’s Keeper
Author: Jodi Picoult
Year: 2004
Bookhad Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
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“The thing is, I didn’t want to be this person anymore. I didn’t want to be the girl who was sick, who made her sister go to court, who forced her family to live like everything was always about dying.”
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If there was an emotionally charged book I read in 2022, this was it.
My Sister’s Keeper is mainly about Kate and Anna Fitzgerald; aged 16 and 13 years of age. It’s the heartbreaking story of a legal battle, if judged a priori, but it is, deep down nothing short of a story of a family trying its hardest to brave its battles.
Kate Fitzgerald is the daughter of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald. She was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia when she was 2 years old and is the driving force behind the story. Her parents, after deliberations and planning, conceive Anna to be a specific match to Kate. At the time the story begins, Anna has already provided Kate with cord blood (when she was a new born), she had lymphocytes drawn multiple times (when she was five) and later when that stopped working for her elder sister, she had a bone marrow transplant.
When Sara asks Anna to donate a kidney to Kate, Anna has had enough and walks into Campbell Alexander’s office to sue her parents for medical emancipation. Anna’s journey of fighting with the people she loves the most begins from here.
Anna is struggling for the right to her body versus her love for Kate. While Kate, on the other hand, has a massive case of guilt, and her emotional weight is unparalleled. Anna feels invisible when it comes to her relationship with her mother to a large extent. She doesn’t remember having agency over her body when it came to helping Kate out. Her conflicts are what make the book a struggle between difficult circumstances and immensely difficult choices. For a 13-year-old, she shows enough maturity to be taken seriously by the cynical, but extremely understanding, Campbell. Despite having all the legal help (from Campbell) and external emotional support (from Julia as a Guardian ad Litem), Anna struggles with picking between the choices set before her, knowing what stands behind every apparent choice she could make.
Kate, while knowing what would happen to her if Anna wins and follows up on it, is certain that she doesn’t want her little sister to suffer the agony and the mental anguish which entails her help constantly. Kate persistently feels a sense of guilt for putting Anna in a spot time and again for no fault of hers. She knows that her broken body can only be repaired by a painful medical procedure that Anna has to go through.
Kate’s emotional journey is not limited to guilt concerning Anna. Her feelings of isolation and exhaustion, along with the weight of expectations from her family, has repercussions that heighten the sense of helpless acceptance that Kate has to agree to. She knows that her entire family’s life is defined by their struggle to keep her alive, and it would not do to not respect that.
The lives of their parents are not too different; not when it comes to being subject to a rollercoaster of emotional upheavals. Sara Fitzgerald has the unenviable task of caring for and loving both her daughters, but always having to pick one when the time comes for a choice. Her struggle towards making Kate survive is almost blinding, and it seems that she cannot see beyond it. While I wouldn’t say that she ignores Anna, but she definitely is ignorant towards the damage, psychological as well as physical, that her actions cause her. Brian Fitzgerald, though more emotionally aware of what they’re doing to Anna is helpless when it comes to taking a firm stand. It feels like Anna suing them helps Brian become clearer towards the needs of Anna and is more supportive and understanding towards her.
I’ve made the same mistake which is probably an indication of the microcosm of Life. Briana and Sara have a third child, actually their eldest. Jesse is the invisible one; the one both parents unknowingly ignore, because the majority of their lives are taken up by the two sisters. His life has a typical curve that can be expected from an ignored teen. His rebelliousness and acting out could easily be identified as a call of help; but no one was watching.
Jodi Picoult has either woven a love ballad hidden under the guise of trauma or a tragedy intertwined with inescapable love. It’s the kind of love that is like a flickering candle in the wind, but not weak to be stubbed out.
Picoult’s writing skills are unmatched, and she manages to make every character seem lovable, real and equally frustrating at times. She writes beautifully about something whose ingredients manifest ugliness, and the reader would expect a likely display of wrought emotions and overflowing angst. There’s nothing that indicates how the apparently loosely held family would react. Apart from the reader’s typical expectations, which vary upon the emotive spectrum from “this is the end” to “Woah!”, there’s really nothing that informs us enough to make a decision.
Does the love between Kate and Anna come to a heartbreaking end in a family feud? Or, do Sara and Brian finally let the dice fall where they may? Or, do the parents walk through the nightmare of proving their love for each of their kids, in equal measure and intensity?
A fantastic read.
Bookhad
(11.05.2025)
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