Friday, July 24, 2009

My Sister's Keeper... So Disappointing

**Warning: This post contains spoilers.  If you haven’t read the novel, I suggest you don’t read the post unless you want a shocking ending to be completely ruined.**

So, I just finished My Sister’s Keeper.   It’s a brilliant novel, until you get to the end.  I don’t know about you, but I felt completely cheated in those last few chapters.  What on earth was Jodi Picoult thinking?

This whole novel centers around Anna Fitzgerald fighting to have control over her own life.  She finally gets it and in the end, she gets into a  freak car accident and dies.  That is a cheap ending if I ever read one.  It completely undermines what this novel is essentially about: freedom to control your own destiny.  So basically, we follow Anna for 400+ pages, sympathize with her struggles, and in the end it’s all for absolutely nothing.  Since Anna’s life is snuffed out by forces beyond her control, everything she fought for, and essentially the whole storyline of the novel, is pointless.  And the fact that Kate lives and defies the odds because she now has the blessing of her sister’s kidney, oh please.  It’s so sappy I can barely stand it. 

You know, for once in my life I actually like the ending of the movie version better.  Of course, I don’t like all of the movie, because there are a whole set of characters in the novel who aren’t even mentioned in the movie.  But at the end of the movie things are as they should be.  Kate dies, which of course is sad and tragic, but Anna gets a chance to have her own life.  Anna finally gets to be her own person and her mother, Sara, is finally able to let go. 

Is anyone as disappointed as I am?

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