Restricted Section--DISCUSSION BEGINS TODAY!

[http://users.livejournal.com/__megh/]

First of all, here are the winners of our banner contest

1st place: dolface546 Congratulations! 50 points
2nd place: matchgirl42 Also congratulations! 40 points
There was no third place.

Thank you very much to both of you. Hopefully our discussion will have a lot more participation.


The points for the discussion go like this:

For your first good [meaning it adds something to our discussion] comment, you will get 10 points. You can only recieve that once, but the person with the most comments will get 50 points on top of that, 40 for second, and 30 for third.


So we'll begin the discussion with this question, obviously it can be led different directions, and also other members can ask questions for the whole group. I will be changing and adding more questions as we go.
Give this book one emotion and explain why you picked that particular emotion [ex. happy, because blah blah.]


And this discussion will close on September 25th.

Comments

[possibilities.livejournal.com]

She has been deprived of a greater life.

Despite my huge frustration with it, I did cry when Anna died. It was terrible. She was deprived of her life first by her parents, for her sister's sake. Then she was deprived, in a more short-term way, by giving up her 'normal' family life by taking her family to court. Finally, she was simply deprived of any life at all by death. It was terribly depressing.

I didn't particularly feel that the novel conveyed a sense of Anna appreciating her life. I don't know if it would be possible for Anna to appreciated her life. She never lived her life. She was always, always living for someone else.

[possibilities.livejournal.com]

I think you were clear, and what we have is a difference in opinions. :-) I don't really believe that it's possible for someone to appreciate life in general until she appreaciates her own life. I think she understands those things, like you do, and I think that you do need to understand them to live and appreciate a full life. But the understanding isn't all there is to appreciating life. I think that although Anna had that understanding, she didn't yet appreciate life - her own or in general.

*will take your work hours to read Freud and Genesis for classes*

[possibilities.livejournal.com]

Like rushofsilence, I was hoping to really get into a discussion.... So, I'm just going to do it for fun, and maybe I can be accepted at some distant date in the far future. :(

Give this book one emotion and explain why you picked that particular emotion.

Disappointment. I couldn't put this book down. I cried in a Tim Hortons reading it. Then I read the ending and wanted to hurl it across the Tim Hortons.

Jodi Picoult weaves a great story. Until the end, she never shied away from exploring the intense emotions involved with a child taking her family to court to sue for her own body. The moment of greatest tension came when everyone was getting their reasons out in the open. The reader goes, "Wow. This is bad. I have no idea how the family is going to come to terms with this."

Apparently, Picoult had the same thoughts. She walks away from the most interesting and climatic point of her story, fully giving the impression that she hasn't the faintest idea how to end her own book. So, in her confusion, she kills off the main character and voila. Random emotional manipulation and no conclusion.

She was sloppy. It smacked of laziness. She had a novel that could have been -- should have been -- one of the most moving and powerful novels in years. And her own ending undermined all the hard work she had done in getting it there.

The disappointment of a lazy writer's sloppy ending just destroyed any emotional credibility the book had for me. Either have the guts to write your story -- really, really write it -- or just don't.

I could never recommend this book, simply because I think readers deserve better than that. My disappointment overshadowed all the good feelings I had for it.

[possibilities.livejournal.com]

For me, a novel's ending is far more important than it's beginning. You remember best what you last see of it. A first impression can be changed. But the ending is final, and what it hits you with is, ideally, the entire point of the novel. So while Ms Picoult did hit us with the ultimate fuitility of standing up for oneself, I'm not convinced that was her point during the rest of the novel. There are so many better written books to read; why was time on a sloppy job? [But on an OT note, I think the HP books are not particularly well written books, yet I love them anyway. Hmm.]

Should they have ended Kates misery and therefore also Annas earlier?
I had the impression that the parents, or at least the mother, honestly had no idea that they were putting Anna through misery. I don't think she could have made the choice to end Anna's misery, even if it meant ending Kate's, simply because she never noticed Anna's suffering.

I think that feeds directly into the first ethical question. Should the parents have even created Anna, if that's all she was for? Yes, they did love her as Anna. But the Anna they loved was not only their youngest daughter - the Anna they loved was also the elder daughter and an illusion of what could be. Anna was never just a person to them. Is it ethical to have a child who you're not willing to love simply on the basis of being your child? I think that, specifically, is what the novel asked.