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and life along the winding road

Monday, January 18, 2016

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

In each of Jodi Picoult's novels, she takes the reader on a journey and Leaving Time is no different from her other stories. Although the novel is fiction, most of the elephant stories are true and she obviously has a passion for their demise through poaching and carelessness of those who have little value for life.

From the cover:
For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother's whereabouts. Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who originally investigated Alice's case.

My thoughts:
Jodi Picoult doesn't write in conventional chapters, but rather juggles the thoughts of various characters which gives the reader insight into different views of the situation, As with all her books, Ms. Picoult has done extensive research to give the reader a glimpse into the life of Alice and her husband who are both conducting elephant research. At times, I found myself skipping over some of the information about elephant behavior. Serenity is the complete opposite of the researchers and clues Jenna in on the spirits of those who have died and what to expect from them. Between the scientist and the psychic, it gives the reader two completely polar views of the story. The ending is totally unexpected and shows what a crafted writer Ms. Picoult is.