By: Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult's specialty is the unprecedented and complex opportunities and dilemmas that arise with increasing frequency in the 21st century. Picoult explores all facets of these issues, particularly as they overlap in law and medicine, through sympathetic characters and engaging plots. The twin premises of Handle With Care are the disease of osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, and the tort of "wrongful birth." As told to Willow O'Keefe by family and friends, this is a story of courage, betrayal and above all love - felt and demonstrated by each character in radically different ways. Willow, diagnosed with OI at the fetal age of 27 weeks and aging in the novel from 5 to 7, is her family's focus, but it is her mother who has devoted every moment to her care and who initiates the novel's life-changing sequence of events. Willow's feelings are echoed in subplots about adoption and eating disorders. And borrowing from culinary fiction, Picoult intersperses recipes that reflect the characters' relationships and interactions. As she has done in the past, Picoult uses a bitter and unlooked-for conclusion to underscore the impossibility of knowing the perfect answer. Review by Anne. (Fiction) 07/15/09
