of Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

For last year Christmas (sounded like eons ago which in fact is just a couple of days before), Xueli bought me a novel by one of my favourite author; Jodi Picoult. I was so excited that I read the book that very night. Thanks gal!

“Handle with care” by Jodi Picoult is her more recent work after ‘My Sister’s Keeper”.

Thought it isn’t as much a tearjerker as the latter, it is nonetheless still a good read.

To me, both books have very similar theme but crafted so differently.

In “My Sister’s Keeper”, which by the way is one of my favourite book, it explores the controversy of ‘designer babies’ and their social, emotional and mental implications. Will a mother compromise the life of a child in order to save another dying child?

While in “Handle with Care”, it breaks the barrier of medical ethics and personal morality. It’s about a mother’s love and protection over a disabled child at the expense of losing her own family and betraying her best friend.

Both book that a recurring theme of “How far will you go for someone you love”?

Spoilers ahead!

Charlotte O'Keefe’s baby girl is born with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease. Like an irony, her family name her Willow just like the willow tree so that she will bend and not break. You see, Willow will suffer hundreds of broken bone throughout her life. She could easily break a bone while sneezing or by turning in her bed. In another words, it will be a lifetime of pain and suffering. As her family struggles to cover astronomical medical expenses, her mother Charlotte decides to file a wrongful birth lawsuit against her obstetrician for the compensation which might ensure that she can fund a lifetime of care for Willow.
But it means that Charlotte has to testify in a court of law that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she'd known about the disability in advance. It would mean that she has to testify that she had rather Willow has never been born.
But that’s a lie because Charlotte has never loved another person as much as she loved Willow. At the same time as Willow brought her inconvenience and disrupted her life, she also brought Charlotte joy, love, sunshine and the strength she never knew she had. But will Willow know that Charlotte is lying in order to give her a better life? At a young age of 5, will she know that sometimes loving means you have to lie? Does her husband and her teenage daughter that for a fact?

To make matter worse, the obstetrician she's suing isn't just her physician - she's her best friend.

Faced with the accusation from local media that she is a gold-digger, betrayal of her best friend, separation from her husband and teenage daughter, Charlotte still choose to continue the law suit for Willow’s sake.
In the end of the court battle, she won the case at gotten 8 million dollars for compensation for the “wrongful birth lawsuit”.

The story ends with a final chapter written from the perspective of Willow. It is 2 years after the law suit and she is alone at a frozen lake, or so she thought. Suddenly, the surface of the ice break and she has fallen into the water. As soon as it breaks, the ice started to freeze again and trapped Willow in-between. This time, she thought: “Finally, I’m not the one who breaks”……