Book Review: Handle with Care

Handle with Care will not surprise any Jodi Picoult fans. She delivers an excellent story revolving around a rare disease and the beautiful little girl, Willow, who suffers from it; it being osteogenesis imperfecta, better known as brittle bones. Picoult uses her usual style of narration by telling the story through each of the characters viewpoints as if they are talking to Willow; until near the end where Willow actually speaks herself.

There are several characters who speak to Willow throughout the book; her parents, Charlotte and Sean, her sister Amelia and her mother's best friend Piper. Piper is also Charlotte's obstetrician and the one who finds Willow's first broken bones while she is still in utero, during an ultrasound she and Charlotte have done on a lark. They decide to find out the sex even though Sean has said he does not want to know. Instead they find the OI. Piper's daughter, Emma, is the same age as Amelia and her BFF.

Another character who speaks to Willow is Marin Gates. She is Charlotte's lawyer in the wrongful birth suit she files against Piper. Picoult uses Marin as a side story. Marin is searching for her birth mother and her search and the emotions it brings up correlate interestingly with the rest of the plot line.

True to form, Picoult throws in a little extra fun in the form of recipes from Charlotte. Charlotte was an up and coming pastry chef when she became pregnant with Willow. As a prelude to the recipe for sweet pastry dough Charlotte instructs us on the process of baking a pie crust without the filling by using beans to prevent it from collapsing. After baking you can remove the beans and see how they kept the shell in its original shape.

"I like seeing how a substance that weighs heavily can, in the end, be lifted; I like the feel of the beans , like trouble that slips through your fingers. Most of all, I like the proof in the pastry; it is the things we have to bear that shape us." Pg 122

This quote does a wonderful job of illustrating the story line of this book. Handle with Care is a novel that one will not soon forget. As with any Jodi Picoult novel the ending comes out of left field and leaves us all with the message that we should handle those we love with care.