Revolutionary Road

This is one book I was ready to be done with. Get divorced already! This is the story of a miserable unhappy couple in the 1950's. Then again maybe they are just a normal couple who seem miserable with each other and with themselves. From the outside appearances to their friends and neighbors they seem like the perfect average couple. He has an average job, they live in an average house, they have two kids. But, they each have such a huge longing for more than they have. She wants to be an actress, he just wants. He's in what he feels is a nothing job that he feels he was forced to take after he got married and found out his wife was pregnant. She didn't want to be pregnant, he didn't really want kids but couldn't stand the thought that she might choose to not have HIS child, so he convinced her to have it and took a job he hated in turn. From there the hate grew, and they continued to do things neither of them wanted to do.

Then one day she decides she wants them to be happy and hatches this grand scheme for them to be. They will run away, leave the country, she'll go to work and let him find himself. Then a wrench gets thrown in the plan, as she finds herself pregnant again. At the same time, Frank discovers that he might actually like his job and maybe he doesn't want to leave after-all.

The constant push and pull they go through with each other left me wanting them to split up. They were both so unhappy why would they stay together, and as the reader I was left wanting nothing more than to see her leave him or him leave her. While the ending was not quite what I expected it wasn't really a huge surprise either.

I really could not find one redeeming value in either April or Frank; both were completely selfish. Both manipulated each other to their own means. So in the end I guess this couple really deserved each other. I guess you could say that this book is about the damage that we do to one another when we don't stop to care about anything but ourselves, when we only try to redeem ourselves instead of feeling for someone else.

Watching the movie, it seemed that Frank was the bad guy, granted April wasn't completely blameless, but the movie seemed to give her a lot more credit than I found in her in the book. In the movie, I almost felt a little sorry for her, but the book didn't really allow for that.

My Sister's Keeper - by Jodi Picoult

This is the first book I've ready by Jodi Picoult and I couldn't put it down. The story is about a 13 year old girl who was conceived to be a genetic match to her older sister who suffers from a rare form of Leukemia. In her few short years she's already given several donations to her sister, from blood to bone marrow and now she is being asked to give her kidney. She is asking for the right to have a say in this decision.

The book alternates first person POV from Anna who is struggling to obtain her own identity for the first time in her life. To Kate, the sick sister who has fought hard and would like her own chance at a normal life. To Jesse, the brother who has become invisible to the family so wrapped up in his sister's illness. To Sara, the mother so wrapped up in trying to save her daughter she doesn't realize what she is doing to the rest of the family. Brian, the father is a fire-fighter, who has dedicated his life to saving people yet he can't do anything to save his daughter. Campbell, the lawyer that Anna hires, has his own issues. He initially takes the case seeing an opportunity for glory but realizes that he has a much larger opportunity. Julia, who is appointed as the Guardian Ad Litem to help make the decision as to whether or not Anna or her parents should have final say in Anna's choice to help her sister.

The book goes back and forth in time and shares the history of this family as well as the current state of affairs. It is a book about family and how we take them for granted. It is a book about how easy it is to slip through the cracks and become or, at least, feel invisible even amongst those who love you the most. It is a book about the masks we wear and how we try to hide our weaknesses to be strong for those around us. The book addresses some hard choices, from the current situation with stem cell research and the idea of creating a "designer baby" to the choices many of us have to make at some point in our life when it comes to health/medical issues of those we love.

The ending was not at all what I expected, but it really did end the only way that the book could end. Throughout the book you will smile and you will shed tears, sometimes for happy moments and sometimes for those moments in life that are sad not because of what happens but because of the circumstances that can't be avoided.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I intend to. However, from the previews I have seen it is apparent that they do take some license with the book, I just hope they don't take too much.