Resumo de Vanishing Acts

I just read the latest book by Jodi
Picoult. I haven?t read all of her books?about half?but I plan to read the rest.
Her books are not easy. Nothing is simple. Nothing is what it seems. Since I?ve
read probably a couple thousand books by now, I like a book to surprise me. They
say there are only 10 plots and everything is a variation on one of those themes
and it?s probably true. The trick, for a good author, is to make it seem new, or
give it a new slant, or write it so well it takes your breath away (she does),
or write characters that make you ache and cry and root for them (and she does).
The writing is so good and the suspense so well drawn that you want to read the
book uninterrupted. You need to know what happens next and you can?t
wait.
This book is about a father who
kidnaps his daughter. When the book starts, the daughter, Delia, is in her late
20s. Her two best friends growing up, Eric and Fitz, are now her fiancée and the
father of her daughter (Eric) and her best friend (Fitz). The reason she hasn?t
married Eric yet is that he is an alcoholic. Fitz is a journalist at a small
paper who starts researching something after an offhand comment is made by
Delia. Unfortunately his research leads to an unraveling of lies?the first is
that her father told her her mother had died when she was four. The second thing
is that he kidnapped Delia, away from Delia?s mother, and bought illegal
documentation giving them new identities and birthdates. That alone sounds like
an intriguing plot, but Jodi Picoult takes you deeper and deeper, until you
question everything you had believed and judged to be true. And that?s how it is
with all her books?she throws in twists and turns and makes you examine your
prejudices, your easy judgments, your behavior and what you believe you would do
in any given situation. She makes you think. She makes you care for the
characters?each and every one. Even and especially the ones you originally
condemned.
Here?s an example of her
writing:
?I imagined things in Sondra?s
company that I?d never bothered to imagine before: what it would feel like to
walk barefoot on a volcano; how to find the patience to count all the stars;
whether it physically hurt to grow old. I wondered about kissing: which way to
turn my head, if her lips would save the impression of mine, the way my pillow
always knew how to come back to the curve of my head night after
night.?
She writes lyrically and at times
she writes brutally. She deals with hard topics: race, child abuse, alcoholism,
neglectful parents and just the everydayness of man?s inhumanity to man. The
father goes to jail and does things he and you never thought he would do. And
that is real life at its most brutal. And yet her books are always redemptive.
They?re not bleak--they leave you feeling like you have discovered new things
about human beings, but not in a way that leaves you sad. It leaves you wiser
but hopeful. Eyes wider open, but your heart is more opened too. I highly
recommend this author.

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