My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

For this read, I'm going to do something a bit different. I am going to compare Jodi Picoult's novel to the film. I saw the film a few weeks before reading the book and I was surprised at how much was condensed, changed and omitted. So here goes...

My Sister's Keeper is a novel which explores one of the biggest moral dilemmas a parent can face: should you have a child to save their sibling? And, if you do, at what point does your 'saviour' child have the right to say no? The novel centres around thirteen-year-old Anna, who was born to save her sister Kate from cancer. Anna decides to sue her parents Brian and Sara for medical emancipation, telling them she doesn't want to donate a kidney to her sister.

The novel is split between the perspectives of several characters: Anna, Sara, Brian, Anna's brother Jesse, Anna's lawyer Campbell and her guardian ad litem Julia. It is only in the novel's conclusion that we hear from Kate. This is an interesting choice. In many ways, the novel is all about Kate; her illness is the driving force behind the events. It links and polarises the characters and her survival is the Fitzgerald family's mission. But until the novel's conclusion, the reader is never given her voice, her opinion. It is all second hand, the characters' perceptions of who she is and what she wants. And as the novel progresses to the conclusion of the court case, it is clear that Anna is the only one who really knows what Kate wants. In the novel, Kate only gets her voice after Anna's death. It is only then, and some years in the future, that Kate gets her chance to speak. With its dramatically different ending, the film does not do this. Instead, Kate dies and Anna lives, meaning that, apart from through Anna at court, the viewer never gets Kate's perspective. Like in the novel, she is seen in scraps, a picture of her character built through others' conversations and recollections.

Both the film and the novel are more about the ripple effect Kate's illness has on her family. Jesse is pushed into the shadows and Anna becomes important for her genetic ability to save Kate. Sara's quest to save her daughter becomes her number one priority. Even her husband gets pushed aside emotionally as she focuses her energy on Kate alone. In the book, her emotional neglect of her family is shown in Jesse's actions. He's a thief, an arsonist and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Sara and Brian have lost patience with him, seeing him as a selfish attention seeker. In the film, however, Jesse is a different character. He is soulful, lost and searching, roaming the streets to find a sense of purpose. It could be that the film would have been too long to focus on Jesse's delinquency; or it could be that the film was dulling his character, making him more sympathetic to the American filmgoer.

The film makes a number of changes to Kate's relationship and last night with Taylor. In the book, Kate decides not to wear a wig as it scratches her head. She also has to wear a dress which fits over her medication line. This practical detail is glossed over in the film, during which Kate is transformed into a flame-haired beauty in a revealing white dress. In the book, Sara chaperones the dance Kate and Taylor attend. In the film, this doesn't happen, leaving them free to slip out and sexually experiment in a disused part of the hospital. When Taylor doesn't call in the film, Kate thinks it is because she let him go too far; in the novel, she thinks he's just cooling off. These subtle changes adapt the tone of their relationship, making Kate's experience something filmgoers could relate to more.

The choice to adapt the ending of the film is the biggest and most controversial change to the novel. In the book, Anna is killed in a car crash hours after winning medical emancipation. Her kidney is used to save Kate and she survives. In the film, the family accept Kate's wishes to die and she passes away. It ends with Anna and her family making their annual holiday on the anniversary of her death, looking into the sunset. At the back of the novel, Picoult says: "...if I wanted it to be a true story, [Anna's death] was the right conclusion". It is interesting, therefore, that such a change was made to the film. The film's ending certainly is more predictable and more "Hollywood". It is also less shocking for the filmgoer. Killing Anna kills everything she battled for. It flips everything the reader expects. But that's what makes it a good ending.

Harrowing, thought-provoking and tragic, both as a film and a novel My Sister's Keeper explores the complex relationships of families and how the illness of a loved one affects every person. But they do so fairly differently and these differences will keep you thinking almost as much as the moral questions Picoult poses.

My next read: The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies