Before I left for my recent two-and-a-half week trip to Alberta, I browsed the audiobook section at our library. A couple books by Jodi Picoult caught my eye, as I’d read her novel My Sister’s Keeper last year and enjoyed it (except for the ending). I picked out Handle with Care (fifteen CDs, eighteen hours of listening) and, as soon as the Jeep was on the highway and the girls were asleep, I popped the first CD in.
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Handle with Care overview
Charlotte O’Keefe is twenty-seven weeks pregnant when she discovers her baby—whom she’d tried for over a year to conceive—has osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease. Willow is born by C-section with seven broken bones and, before she is even hours old, suffers more broken bones and nearly dies. Charlotte quickly becomes an expert in caring for Willow’s breaks; before Willow is five years old, she’s had over fifty broken bones.
Willow’s health and the family finances rule out most family vacations, but when Willow is five, the O’Keefes decide to go to Disneyworld. Disaster strikes on the very first day. Willow ends up in a spika cast with a broken femur and her parents are arrested because the doctors think Willow’s condition looks like physical abuse.
At home after the ordeal, an angry Sean goes to a lawyer, wanting to sue for the way they were treated in Florida. The lawyer says they can’t sue people for doing their jobs—but they could sue Charlotte’s ob-gyn for wrongful birth.
As Willow’s medical costs push the O’Keefe’s further into debt, Charlotte seizes on the wrongful birth suit as her chance to provide better care for Willow. The ends justify the means, she argues, as she sues her ob-gyn (and best friend) and tells a jury and judge she would have aborted Willow if she had known earlier that Willow had OI.
As the lawsuit progresses, Sean refuses to participate and moves out of the house. Amelia turns to cutting and puking to deal with the pain of her parents’ fighting. And even Willow tries not to break any more bones, hoping that if she’s good enough, her parents won’t want to get rid of her.
My thoughts on Handle with Care
Jodi Picoult doesn’t shy away from tough issues, and Handle With Care raises a lot of tough issues. The novel is told from each character’s first-person point of view, and in the audiobook I listened to, each character was read by a different actor. I liked the way Picoult explored each person’s feelings, delving deep into their emotions and motivations.
For example, the thought of cutting myself to deal with outside pain seems bizarre—but Amelia’s descriptions of why she did it made complete sense. At times, I was angry with Charlotte for failing to see how much she was hurting her family; at other times, I could completely understand her mother’s drive to do whatever she could to help her daughter.
While I enjoy Picoult’s insight as a writer (and tried to analyze just how she was able to get into her character’s heads so well), I don’t like the way she ended Handle with Care. In fact, I wished that I had turned off the CD after the lawsuit ended.
In an interview on her website, Picoult says of the ending, “I do know the ending before I write a single word, and I did here too. I will tell you that I think Handle with Care is the saddest book I’ve written—and coming from me, that’s pretty dire! I never wavered on the ending, however, because there’s a bit of a morality lesson in there as well—it’s a real ‘Be careful what you wish for’ moment.”
If you haven’t read the books and want to, I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say that a main character dies at the end of each Picoult book I’ve read so far (and after reading My Sister’s Keeper, I was expecting it to happen in Handle with Care). I don’t need a happily-ever-after ending to every book I read, but I do want a realistic ending. Knocking off a major character seems random and unnecessary. Because of those endings, I’m not sure I’ll read another Picoult book—but I do hope I can learn how to understand my characters as well as she does.
Have you read Handle with Care or any other Jody Picoult novels? What do you think?
One Response
I have yet to read Handle with care, but I wouldn’t recomend giving up Jodi Picoult books. I have read many of her books. All of them are sad, but so good and really get you thinking. She is one of my favorite authors, but you have to start her books knowing that they are going to be a ‘deep’ read. Although if you don’t like the way My Sisters keeper ended you will probably not like the endings in most of her books, there is usually a twist.