The Center for women's reproductive health offers a last chance at hope - but nobody ends up there by choice.
Its very existence is controversial, and to the demonstrators who barricade the building every day, the service it offers is no different from legalised murder.
Now and life and death decisions are being made horrifyingly real; a lone protester with a gun has taken the staff, patients and visitors hostage.
Starting at the tensest moment in the negotiations for their release, A Spark of Light unravels backwards, revealing hour by urgent hour what brought each of these people - the gunman, the negotiator , the doctors, nurses and women who have come to them for treatment - to this point.
And certainties unwind as truths and secrets are peeled away revealing the complexity of balancing the right to life with the right to choose.
As the right up would suggest this latest novel from Jodi Picoult is written in a time line working from 5pm back across the day to the point when a gunman walked into the center and starts shooting and taking hostages. Throughout the chapters winding back the clock hour by hour you get to know about the doctors and nurses who work for the center. About the clients who use the facility and ultimately why a seemingly harmless father would walk into a center brandishing a gun.
Jodi Picoult is one of my marmite authors. Some of her work I absolutely love whilst others I just cannot get into. Even moving past the content of the storyline it took me a while to get into this novel and at times there was too much explicit detail to the medical procedure that wasn't relevant to the chapter. I wouldn't of said it was a page turner for me and definitely not a case of not being able to put down and if anything left me a little disappointed.
Having checked out the reviews on other sites it would seem that general opinion was around a 3/5 and I have to say that on this occasion I would have to agree with them. Here's hoping that the next one will be much more in keeping with her usual standard of work.
Mx
It's a shame you were disappointed as the storyline sounds intriguing. I've never read anything by Jodi Picoult, though I've nearly picked up one of her books on a few occasions.
ReplyDeleteMost of her books I can really get into and hard to put down Jo. Sadly this one didn't hit the spot for me and the reviews on other sites seem to be of the same opinion. Hopefully her next one will win me over again.
DeleteMx