BHC Book Club: My Sister's Keeper

On Friday night the BHC Book Discussion Group met at Sheila's apartment to discuss My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Sheila provided a delicious dinner: a giant bagel sandwich, cole slaw, potato and macaroni salad, fruit salad, cookies and chocolates.

After we ate the "jury" convened to deliberate on whether the various characters in the Fitzgerald family acted ethically. For the most part, we favored Anna, the main character, who was created as a "designer baby" to be a perfect genetic match and therefore a stem cell donor for her older sister Kate, who had a rare and very dangerous form of leukemia. Most of us criticized the mother, Sara, for her obvious favoritism toward Kate to the exclusion of her two other children, Anna and Jesse. Anna was raised with the expectation that she would always be there to donate blood, bone marrow and even body parts to save her sister. Jesse, the oldest and the only male, has become so embittered by being pushed aside and treated as insignificant that he has resorted to drugs, stealing cars, and arson. The father, Brian, could be viewed as kinder to his youngest child than Sara, or else as passive, letting Sara make all the decisions and not putting in his two cents.

Some people felt that Sara was right to try and save Kate at all costs, even if it meant endangering Anna. Others felt Anna was right to bring a lawsuit for medical emancipation from her parents so that they could not coerce her into giving up a kidney for her sister. The discussion was lively and impassioned, and all sorts of moral criteria came to the fore.

It's a tough book to read, especially with the shocking and tragic ending. But the writing drew me in and I ended up reading it three times.

This was an excellent evening, with lots of input from everyone. Our next book will be A Thousand Splendid Suns.