Vanishing Acts Book

Never reading Jodi Picoult again. If there were just one thing wrong with this book I'd give her another try, but read on.

The number one thing I hated about this book was the Hopi character who has breast cancer and kills herself, without bothering to get any treatment, just jumps off a cliff in front of Delia, who doesn't stop her because if she had to look forward to losing her hair and a breast, she'd probably do it too. Well good god, hair grows back. They can give you new, bigger boobs. But no one can restore you to your family and friends. If this woman had had a chance to think this over, if someone had bothered to go to the doctor with her and see what her options are, she might have changed her mind.

We're never given enough information for this to have seemed to have been an informed decision. The woman obviously wasn't in any advanced state of cancer, as she hiked out to this remote spot to jump from, and had previously continued every activity of daily living unimpaired. Why Picoult would even want to put this in a book calls her entire brain into question.

The number two thing is Dear Daddy. While being held in jail, mind you, not prison, but county jail, Dear Daddy gets involved in a drug ring manufacturing and selling meth, shoots someone in the eye with a staple, makes a gun, hides a bullet, smuggles drugs and more. Oh yeah and holds his best buddy, the Black Guy Who Has to Die, in his arms as he dies. This is all in what seems to have been about 2 months. And yet Dear Daddy is the good guy. The reader is the only one who knows this, which makes you wonder why it's there at all, but still, if that doesn't reflect on Daddy's character, I don't know what it would take.

Number 3. Mommy has not had a drink in 26 years, and reaches out to Delia, and yet there's no indication that Delia has the emotional maturity to forgive and establish a relationship. Get over it Delia.

Number 4, Delia. Delia has one admirable trait, being a good mom. Which turns out to be just thinking she's a good mom, see below. Other than that, she's a self-centered, self-righteous bitch who never cuts anyone any slack.

Number 5. Victor, Mommy's boyfriend, may or may not have molested Delia, and yet even though he took her daughter for a visit WITHOUT ASKING and had her alone for an uncertain amount of time, Delia, Mother of the Year, never follows up on checking whether Victor may have molested her own daughter, nor does she even tell Victor that that taking a kid without asking is not OK.

Number 6. Eric, Delia's fiance, also alcoholic, starts drinking while defending Daddy. So, why does Delia insist on him taking the case? He is most emphatically NOT the best man for the case, as he's not a member of the Arizona bar, has never defended anyone on this kind of charge or even any criminal charges that we know of, and has a background that is sure to cause his immense emotional distress in defending Daddy.

But Delia doesn't care about Eric, Delia cares about Delia, and it never crosses her mind to hire someone else. This is because Delia lives in a novel and Jodi Picoult has a lot of points to make.

Again, even though Eric himself hasn't drunk for 2 years, Jodi Picoult can't leave him alone and let him be a good guy. Like Mommy, he is bad. Oh, not really bad, because like Fitz and her father, Eric's whole world just revolves around Darling Delia, so that makes him OK. But he is someone you have to throw away for the good of your child. So Delia throws him away for Fitz. I mean the good of her child. Who will be scarred by the whole experience.

Finally, although Delia is supposed to be a great mother she never gives a thought to how her child might take this throwing over of Eric, her father, for this other dude. This is because both the guys love Delia, and therefore her daughter, and she probably just won't notice the difference.

Number 7, Fitz as a character has one characteristic; he's hopelessly in love with Delia. This is enough for both Delia and Picoult. It's also the only thing he ever talks about, and losing his job is apparently so inconsequential that no one even wonders how he and Delia are going to pay the bills when they get back to New Hampshire. Last I heard, search and rescue, Delia's so-called career, is a volunteer gig, not a paying job. No wonder she still lives with Daddy!

Fitz is basically just standing around, waiting for Delia to ride off into the sunset with him. That is, once Eric's life is trashed. This switch from love of her life Eric to best friend Fitz takes about a 2 weeks for Delia to justify. Good luck to all of them.

Number 8: I could forgive all the writer's workshop flowery writing if that was the only fault of this book, but it's not. This book in no way stands up to the oh-so-beautiful writing. All the freaking metaphors while the lovemaking characters who are 5 minutes from breaking up was enough to make you puke. Pull a curtain over it gentle writer, and move on.

This is a really bad romance novel, not a poem. There were no passages that made me want to stop and underline, there were only great globs of writing I wanted to stop and draw a line through. Truly the worst novel I've read this year if only because of its pretensions. Throw in the rest, and it's bad on a scale I haven't encountered in a long time.