Mothers and Daughters

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/zKrzpjVM040

Enjoy! ( )

This is a review I wrote in 2007:

Faith is a 7 year old little girl. "Keeping Faith" is the story of a custody battle between her mum Mariah, and her dad Colin - who gets to keep Faith?

7 years before the novel begins Mariah found out that her husband, Colin, was having an affair, and she fell to pieces. After a failed suicide attempt Colin has her committed to a mental hospital where she later finds out she is pregnant... with Faith. So when they let her out of the hospital she turns her life around and learns how to be a mum.

Then Colin does it again. This time she catches him in the act, and Faith also is witness to his infidelity. Separation is inevitable. Colin goes to live with his mistress and when the divorce is settled, he freely gives over custody of his daughter to Mariah.

However, neither of them account for what comes next. Faith starts to perform miracles and to show "stigmata", involuntary bleeding corresponding to Christ's wounds. Faith becomes the subject of media interest - TV, media, journalists, Rabbis, Fathers (as in the Catholic Church), priests, psychiatrists... they all want a piece of Faith. What in the world is happening to Faith? And why? Needless to say, all this attention results in Colin wanting his daughter back. Doubts creep in... is Mariah doing this to her? The heart-wrenching custody battle ensues.

Wonderfully researched, beautifully written. You can't fault Picoult here. She takes an explosive subject and skilfully weaves her way around the different arguments and religious and non-religious approaches. Very thought provoking, and a page-turning read! ( )

Explores family dynamics and the intricacies of motherhood, and concludes, as did The Pact, with tense courtroom drama.

In the small town of New Canaan, N.H., 33-year-old Mariah discovers that her husband, Colin, is having an affair. Years ago, his cheating drove Mariah to attempt suicide and Colin had her briefly committed to an institution. Now Mariah's facing divorce and again fighting depression, when her eight-year-old daughter, Faith, suddenly acquires an imaginary friend. Soon this friend is telling the girl how to bring her grandmother back from the dead and how to cure a baby dying of AIDS. As Faith manifests stigmata, doctors are astounded, and religious controversy ensues, in part because Faith insists that God is a woman.

An alarmed Colin sues for custody of Faith, and the fear of losing her daughter dramatically changes meek, diffident Mariah into a strong, protective and brave woman, one who fights for her daughter, holds her own against doctors and lawyers and finds the confidence to pursue a surprising new romance with TV atheist Ian Fletcher, cynical "Spokesman of the Millennium Generation."

Though the novel feels a bit long, Picoult's pacing stabilizes the increasingly complicated plot, and the final chapters, in which Mariah fights for Faith's custody in court, are riveting. The mother-daughter relationship is all the more powerful for being buffeted by the exploitative and ethically questionable domains of medicine, media, law and religion; these characters' many triumphant transformations are Picoult's triumphs as well. Agent, Laura Gross.

I haven’t read a Jodi Picoult for a while, not since I realised how similar and formulaic they all were. I picked this up, one of her earlier ones, having read the back cover blurb and decided that it might be different - it seemed a difficult scenario to shoehorn a courtroom drama into. I soon realised I was wrong - there was the courtroom drama all present and correct, but not only that, this novel lacked the polish of her later ones, and in terms of the narrative focus, it was all over the place. People changed opinion and motivation to suit the needs of the story and the whole thing just felt messy and repetitive.

At the book’s centre is the character Faith, who appears to be performing miracles right left and centre, not least the apparent resuscitation of her clinically dead grandmother, and the development of stigmata. On the one hand I fully expected the book to explain all these away in some common sense way by the end. On the other hand the events were presented as pretty much unchallengeable. I suspected it would have something to do with the changing viewpoint, and Faith’s mother Mariah would be shown to be an unreliable narrator in some way, and most of it didn’t happen. After all, much of the book centred around a contrived battle for custody of the child, alleging that in some way the mother was in some way causing the “miracles” to happen for attention or something.

I hope it won’t count as a spoiler to say that I was wrong about that, and that the eventual conclusion was far less illuminating. ( )