Tommy Collison

Handle With Care – Jodi Picoult

Brief plot overview: Charlotte O’Keefe has a daughter born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). Money is tight at home, so she decides to sue her obstetrician, who happens to be her best friend, on the grounds that she didn’t tell the mom that her daughter would be severely disabled. To do this, she’d have to stand up in court and publicly admit that if she’d known, she’d have had an abortion.

I found reading a book with a child with a disability incredibly interesting. Of course, osteogenesis imperfecta is a lot worse than what I’ve got, but I can relate to a lot of the non-stricly-medical stuff in the book. How often have I looked at people doing something and thought that I’d never do that stuff.

Have you ever wanted something just because you couldn’t have it?

I think a lot of people have. I’m not talking about the ability to play football professionally or anything, but something everyday, like wanting a second scoop of icecream after dinner but not being allowed.

One example I vividly remember, which, admittedly might be a better analogy than the one above, is one time our neighbours were going to some fairground and I wanted to go along. I don’t exactly remember why, but my mom didn’t want to go. I was 8 or so, I argued but after a while I came to realize that I was only arguing because my mother was saying no. I didn’t really care about the fairground. I only heard about it that day, and I’d suddenly started arguing for a completely different reason halfway through.

Getting back to the book, I found it fascinating just reading about a family with disabilities. You may think that living with/in one might serve the same purpose, but with the former, you’re an observer, the latter, a participant.

Picoult’s writing didn’t strike me as anything fantastic, which is miles away from it being bad, or a drawback of the book. Then again, how much of our enjoyment of books is to do with the subject matter, or the style it’s presented in? I enjoyed this book for what it was about. That’s what made this book special for me. That’s why I read it for half an hour in my tent last night by iPhone-light (yes, it does get that dark in France).

Actually, on that note, I’ve gotten a strange knowledge of which apps work well for providing the most light. I don’t have the flashlight one, which in hindsight, I probably should have. I found the Address Book app, SMS and iCal provided enough light to read a book by. The key is having one on a white background, I think any’d do. The less text on it, the better. With the address book, you could do a search for something that’d just leave a blank screen. Random characters that are bound not to be the name of someone in your phonebook maybe?

Sorry to Mr. Xcjbkveby if he ever does read this.

That’s tangent numero 2. Back to the book..

I’m not going to go into the morals of it. I have my thoughts on abortion and adoption and I know under which banner I stand under at the Pro-life/Pro-choice rallies but I’m not going to go into them. I know I’ll just end up pissing someone off and all I’m doing is reviewing a book. Picking a fight, it’s called.

Odd as it is to call myself shy (nothing, I’m sure, to what the shock of reading it is), I’m always one for avoiding confrontation. Not necessarily arguing with someone (my family will no doubt vouch for me when I say that I enjoy an argument as much as the next blogger/teenager) but the other types. If I get a crepe when I ordered a waffle, I’ll keep my mouth shut and just eat the darn thing. If I order an orange juice that takes 20 minutes to get to me, I wouldn’t make a snide comment about how it must be straight from the orange if it took that long, I’ll just say ‘thanks’ and drink it.

I’m meek like that.

Tangent #3 done and dusted..

I enjoyed the scenes at the OI convention for a number of reasons. I liked the idea of lots of people with the same disability getting together and then no one has to worry about social stuff. I liked the idea of the mother being bitched to by all the OI patients and their mothers.

Oh, wait, let’s go back to tangent #3 for a moment.

That’s one area I’m most definitely not meek.

Let’s just take an example of one person from the book.

* goes off to the book and finds the page *

Aha! Here we go! Oh, the book is written in first person by a load of the main characters, in this case, the mom:

The elevator doors opened, and I slipped inside and punched a button. Just as the doors were closing, a crutch jammed between them. The man who signed us in yesterday was standing on the threshold … his eyes were dark as pitch. ‘Just so you know – it’s not my disability that makes my life a constant struggle,’ he said. ‘It’s people like you.’

I fully support remarks like that, and have even said things along those lines to several people. I say ‘remarks like that’, I mean telling that person that it’s people like that person, not Charlotte O’Keefe.

I support them so much, there’s a little card in my wallet, which reads: “Ignorance may be a disability, but not one which allows you to park in this space”. I affix it to the windshield wipers of cars parked in disabled spots which belong to people who aren’t disabled. It stems from a Twitter conversation, funnily enough, about what we’d do if we were dictators. I suggested many punishments for undisabled people who parked in disabled spots. I have yet to give a card out, but I’m itching to do so, then hang round to see the driver’s reaction.

Okay, that tangent was so long, we’ll call it tangent #4, which means that tangents 3 and 4 are now done.

When it comes to characters, I liked Willow, the 6 year old with OI, the best. Then again, I would, wouldn’t I? :) I liked Charlotte, but only in certain chapters and scenes. I didn’t like Sean, the husband/dad all that much, but that probably is just because I disagreed with his views.

The ending of the book, a big huge plot twist which we’ll just refer to as the big huge plot twist so as not to spoil it, I found disappointing. You think the book is finished, and then literally the last half page sends it spinning in a completely new direction.

I felt it really unnecessary. Someone, well, an author really who feels the need to finish her book with a bang, is someone I disagree with.

Allow me to demonstrate. I’m going to finish this blogpost with a bang, and you’re going to be annoyed.

RON WEASLEY DIES AT THE END OF THE NEW HARRY POTTER MOVIE!

Okay, I admit, it’s untrue. But did you get annoyed reading it, as if I just included something unnecessary for the sake of it?

That’s how I felt finishing Handle With Care.

I still enjoyed it though.