Friday, October 24, 2008

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

Daniel Stone seems like a normal middle-aged man: he has a wife, daughter, and is a comic book artist. He doesn't like to talk about his past, where he was the only white boy in a small Eskimo village and was bullied for the color of his skin. The anger he has so carefully controlled has only been expressed on the page...until now. When he learns that his fourteen-year old daughter Trixie has been raped, Daniel must fight to keep his anger inside, while also holding together his family that threatens to fall apart.

Jodi Picoult is an amazing author, and even though this book would be catergorized as Adult, all teens should read some of her work. Although, the book switches point-of-view and you get to read from 14-year old Trixie's eyes, so you could say that parts of this book are YA. It doesn't matter though because Picoult's books are so good that any age could read them. This one wasn't as good as the other two I've read by Picoult (My Sister's Keeper and Vanishing Acts), but the story was still really interesting. What I love about Picoult's books is that the plots are so complex, and things aren't always what they seem to be on the outside. This book lagged a little throughout the middle, but then there were other parts that made me want to keep reading. Another cool part of this book is that Daniel Stone is a cartoon artist and there were real pages from his (albeit imaginary) comic book.

7 out of 10.

1 comment:

Steph said...

Ah, Jodi. Love her. One of my favorite adult fiction writers (along with Curtis Sittenfeld). Though I have to say she's lacking now - didn't really LOVE this or Nineteen Minutes and I have yet to read Change of Heart. Her best books are throughout the middle of her career - The Pact, Second Glance, Plain Truth, Keeping Faith, Salem Falls, etc :).

Steph