Jodi Picoult has done it again. She comes out with a new book every year, and this year’s book is called Handle With Care. If you are unfamiliar with Picoult’s style, you should know that her books often deal with controversial topics and are told from a variety of viewpoints. This book is no exception. A part of me sometimes thinks that it is boring to read the same style of book, but because I read other books in between my Picoult reads, I can handle the occasional Picoult read.
This is the story of Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe and their daughter Willow. Willow was born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta. This disease is one in which a person will suffer hundreds of broken bones as they grow up; in other words, a lifetime of pain for some people. The main dilemma is that the family cannot afford Willow’s medical costs. Charlotte decides to find a solution, and the one that she finds is to file a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn for not telling her in advance that her child would be born severely disabled. It all seems relatively simple, but once she thinks about it, she realizes that she would have to get up in front of a court of law and publicly state that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance. Not only would she have to state these words, but she would have to go against the wishes of her husband because those are words that he does not agree with. To make matters even more ethically complicated, the ob/gyn who she is suing isn’t just her physician – it’s her best friend.
Jodi Picoult has once again written a book that is filled with questions about politics, how much life is worth to a person, ethics, and more. It is truly a heart wrenching story and a dramatic page turner. If you liked My Sister’s Keeper or Change of Heart, then you will also enjoy Handle With Care.
