--jodi picoult
{summary}
"What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted? Vanishing Acts explores how life -- as we know it -- might not turn out the way we imagined. Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiancé, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it."
http://www.bookbrowse.com
{remarks}
like most of picoult's books, this was an enjoyable read. the ending had just a slight twist, but i found it not as shocking as most of her book endings. my favorite parts consisted more of the jail scenes with andrew, or the childhood memories that she refers back too.
i have always wondered what the story is behind the faces on the missing children posters pinned in the vestibules at Wal-Mart; especially about the ones that are abducted by parents. what is their story? why did they do it? i am sure not everything is always black and white in these situations. this book is an excellent example of just one of those stories.
{rating}
2 out of 3
{excerpts}
sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for in their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. i've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watches from the wings of the stage. we are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. we're hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived. there
is a saying sometimes chanted at AA meetings: fake it until you make it.
i've done it before. i can do it again. twenty-eight years is a long time to think about why i loved you, and it's not for the reasons i first assumed: because you swam in the space below my heart; or because you stanched the youth i was bleeding out daily; or because on day you might take care of me when i couldn't take care of myself. love is not an equation, as your father once wanted me to believe. it's not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. it is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air. it is the place i come back to, no matter where i've been headed. i loved you, bethany, because you were the one relationship i never had to earn. you arrived in this world loving me more, even when i did not deserve it
delia would say it's just another piece of useless information i'm storing. maybe, but i also know that she reads the last page of a book before she decides to read the first. i know that she likes the smell of new crayons. that she can whistle through her figures and detests curry and has never had a cavity. life is not a plot; it's in the details.
you know what love is, ladies and gentlemen? he asks. it's not doing whatever the person you care for expects of you. it's doing what they don't expect. it's going above and beyond what you've been asked.
--other jodi picoult books i have enjoyed:
- Nineteen Minutes
- The Pact
- My Sisters Keeper (way before it became a movie)
- Handle With Care
- Plain Truth
- Salem Falls
