Jodi Picoult: My Sister's Keeper

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

If there's one thing about Jodi Picoult, it's that she has a good nose for a story. Her plots are usually right on the button, well-imagined dramas that investigate the human truths behind the headlines.

She's "done" eugenics (Second Glance), rape (Salem Falls), murder and love (Mercy), teenage suicide (The Pact), teenage pregnancy (Plain Truth) and her next one will be about a custody-battle kidnapping.

This one, My Sister's Keeper, has as its central character a girl who was selected, when she was still an embryo floating around in a Petri dish, to be a perfect genetic match for her older sister, who has leukemia.

Now 13, Anna's life has been a procession of surgical interventions as she's essentially been plundered for her sister's sake. Now, her parents expect her to donate a kidney. But, in a move that may tear the already crumbling family apart, Anna hires a lawyer to sue her parents to gain control of her body.

Obviously, these are fascinating issues, and there are some dramatic twists that keep the pages turning.

Anna's an interesting, involving character and commands our sympathy and understanding -- for all her seeming contradictions, really her emotions and motivations are childishly straightforward.

But there are fundamental, irritating weaknesses in the adult characters -- unbelievable slackness in Anna's lawyer; unbelievable lack of probing by her parents -- that spoilt it for me. Plot is all very well, but not at the expense of everything else.

* Allen & Unwin, $35