To Reject or Embrace a Dark Heart as Savior
By Janet Maslin writing in the New York Times overnight.
By Janet Maslin writing in the New York Times overnight.
In her newsletter for devotees, which is actually called Pi-Cult, Jodi Picoult describes doing research for her new novel, “Change of Heart.” Some of it took her to a prison in Arizona, where she found herself right next to the lethal-injection gurney while discussing the death penalty with the warden. She also visited a gas chamber. She spoke with a condemned man.
Author pic byGasper Tringale
Author pic byGasper Tringale
CHANGE OF HEART
By Jodi Picoult
447 pages. Atria Books. $26.95.
Related
An Excerpt from "Change of Heart"
But not even the most cultish Picoult fans are likely to think Ms. Picoult broke a sweat while preparing “Change of Heart.” Despite her grim diligence and earnestly religion-based story line, she seems to have written her latest tear-jerker on authorial autopilot. When writers become this popular (Ms. Picoult’s books currently top both The New York Times’s hardcover and paperback best-seller lists), they can coast in ways not possible for the up-and-coming. The opportunity to be long-winded yet perfunctory, paradoxically daring yet formulaic, is available to only proven hit makers at the top of the heap.
As she has done repeatedly, Ms. Picoult dramatizes an argument fit for a debating team. This book’s topic is restorative justice. Its premise is built on miserably unhappy coincidence. What if a bad man murdered a nice woman’s husband? What if he killed her daughter too? What if she had another daughter? What if 11 years later, as the date for the bad man’s execution approached, the second daughter needed a new heart?
What if the bad man wanted to make amends with an organ transplant? What if he wanted to give his bad heart to the innocent child? As Ms. Picoult puts it, in the bold, high-concept idiom of movie ads: “Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy’s dying wish?”
Let’s put it another way: If you were that mother, would it take you 447 pages to make up your mind?
“Change of Heart” is complicated by the miraculous powers of the condemned man. He is a 33-year-old carpenter who sounds stunningly familiar. He cures the sick, turns water into wine, feeds the hungry (albeit with bubble gum) and revives a dead baby bird. His name is Isaiah M. Bourne, which can be shortened to I. M. Bourne, which can be read as “I am born” in bold-face type in a book blessed with the subtlety of a jackhammer. Isaiah is known as Shay, but he also acquires a nickname: “the Death Row Messiah.”
“Change of Heart” is narrated by several characters, each with a different way of elbowing the reader’s ribs. The book’s sort-of-hip clergyman is Father Michael: “Sure, I rode a Triumph Trophy, volunteered to work with gang youth, and broke the stereotype of a priest any chance I got.” He has two jobs here: to give the plot yet another wrenching twist (he still regrets having been on the jury that gave Shay Bourne the death penalty) and to blurt out intimations of Shay’s divinity. “Shay Bourne’s so-called miracles were nothing like Jesus’ ... or were they?,” he asks himself. Humbled as they sound in the face of such mysteries, neither the priest nor the book is actually expressing much doubt.
As for Shay, he can sound quietly messianic, but also has his own borderline-heretical outbursts. “Not that Jesus wasn’t a really cool guy —great teacher, excellent speaker, yadda yadda yadda,” Shay says. “But ... Son of God? Where’s the proof?” That kind of talk offers a better idea of Ms. Picoult’s seriousness than her use of the Gnostic gospels in constructing this story.
Among the novel’s other principals is June Nealon, the woman who lost her daughter and husband. June is a wet hankie of a character, full of grief and anger, but otherwise lacking any distinguishing characteristics. June’s blandness is more than made up for by Maggie Bloom, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who takes on Shay’s case despite her own nagging insecurities. (Does Maggie have cellulite? Will she look fat in court?) In a moment of writerly inertia, Ms. Picoult has Maggie tell the reader: “I might never be a cover girl, but I was a girl who could cover it all.”
Maggie was raised as a Jew, but she is not religious — at least not until she gets a load of Shay and his aura. She has a father who is a clergyman and a pet bunny she has named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Maggie likes to chat with Oliver, the better to make this book needlessly long yet not really lively. It’s anyone’s guess whether Ms. Picoult accidentally put a rabbi and a rabbit into the same book or was trying to win a bet.
Eventually Shay’s destiny draws near and desperation sets in. There is a last-minute effort to find grace. And this is the kind of book in which Grace turns out to be a real person, the sister who lived with Shay in a foster home in Bethlehem, N.H. Grace provides a revelation that is, in a word, amazing. And a verse of “Amazing Grace” is part of the padding included in the text.
At this late stage in her story Ms. Picoult has her own chance for redemption. Had “Change of Heart” culminated in revelations that were truly plausible or unexpected, its vapidity might have been transcended. But there is no substance to the story’s last surprises.
They don’t fit the characters or match what has come before. Nor do the last scenes bring an epiphany, unless you count what happens to Maggie. Her courtroom brilliance brings her a whiff of celebrity. Though this book is nominally about faith and justice, fame matters to “Change of Heart” more than it should.
“You saw me?” Maggie asks her mother, who is usually so critical.
“On television,” her mother says admiringly. “Every channel, Maggie. Even CNN.”
By Jodi Picoult
447 pages. Atria Books. $26.95.
Related
An Excerpt from "Change of Heart"
But not even the most cultish Picoult fans are likely to think Ms. Picoult broke a sweat while preparing “Change of Heart.” Despite her grim diligence and earnestly religion-based story line, she seems to have written her latest tear-jerker on authorial autopilot. When writers become this popular (Ms. Picoult’s books currently top both The New York Times’s hardcover and paperback best-seller lists), they can coast in ways not possible for the up-and-coming. The opportunity to be long-winded yet perfunctory, paradoxically daring yet formulaic, is available to only proven hit makers at the top of the heap.
As she has done repeatedly, Ms. Picoult dramatizes an argument fit for a debating team. This book’s topic is restorative justice. Its premise is built on miserably unhappy coincidence. What if a bad man murdered a nice woman’s husband? What if he killed her daughter too? What if she had another daughter? What if 11 years later, as the date for the bad man’s execution approached, the second daughter needed a new heart?
What if the bad man wanted to make amends with an organ transplant? What if he wanted to give his bad heart to the innocent child? As Ms. Picoult puts it, in the bold, high-concept idiom of movie ads: “Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy’s dying wish?”
Let’s put it another way: If you were that mother, would it take you 447 pages to make up your mind?
“Change of Heart” is complicated by the miraculous powers of the condemned man. He is a 33-year-old carpenter who sounds stunningly familiar. He cures the sick, turns water into wine, feeds the hungry (albeit with bubble gum) and revives a dead baby bird. His name is Isaiah M. Bourne, which can be shortened to I. M. Bourne, which can be read as “I am born” in bold-face type in a book blessed with the subtlety of a jackhammer. Isaiah is known as Shay, but he also acquires a nickname: “the Death Row Messiah.”
“Change of Heart” is narrated by several characters, each with a different way of elbowing the reader’s ribs. The book’s sort-of-hip clergyman is Father Michael: “Sure, I rode a Triumph Trophy, volunteered to work with gang youth, and broke the stereotype of a priest any chance I got.” He has two jobs here: to give the plot yet another wrenching twist (he still regrets having been on the jury that gave Shay Bourne the death penalty) and to blurt out intimations of Shay’s divinity. “Shay Bourne’s so-called miracles were nothing like Jesus’ ... or were they?,” he asks himself. Humbled as they sound in the face of such mysteries, neither the priest nor the book is actually expressing much doubt.
As for Shay, he can sound quietly messianic, but also has his own borderline-heretical outbursts. “Not that Jesus wasn’t a really cool guy —great teacher, excellent speaker, yadda yadda yadda,” Shay says. “But ... Son of God? Where’s the proof?” That kind of talk offers a better idea of Ms. Picoult’s seriousness than her use of the Gnostic gospels in constructing this story.
Among the novel’s other principals is June Nealon, the woman who lost her daughter and husband. June is a wet hankie of a character, full of grief and anger, but otherwise lacking any distinguishing characteristics. June’s blandness is more than made up for by Maggie Bloom, an A.C.L.U. lawyer who takes on Shay’s case despite her own nagging insecurities. (Does Maggie have cellulite? Will she look fat in court?) In a moment of writerly inertia, Ms. Picoult has Maggie tell the reader: “I might never be a cover girl, but I was a girl who could cover it all.”
Maggie was raised as a Jew, but she is not religious — at least not until she gets a load of Shay and his aura. She has a father who is a clergyman and a pet bunny she has named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Maggie likes to chat with Oliver, the better to make this book needlessly long yet not really lively. It’s anyone’s guess whether Ms. Picoult accidentally put a rabbi and a rabbit into the same book or was trying to win a bet.
Eventually Shay’s destiny draws near and desperation sets in. There is a last-minute effort to find grace. And this is the kind of book in which Grace turns out to be a real person, the sister who lived with Shay in a foster home in Bethlehem, N.H. Grace provides a revelation that is, in a word, amazing. And a verse of “Amazing Grace” is part of the padding included in the text.
At this late stage in her story Ms. Picoult has her own chance for redemption. Had “Change of Heart” culminated in revelations that were truly plausible or unexpected, its vapidity might have been transcended. But there is no substance to the story’s last surprises.
They don’t fit the characters or match what has come before. Nor do the last scenes bring an epiphany, unless you count what happens to Maggie. Her courtroom brilliance brings her a whiff of celebrity. Though this book is nominally about faith and justice, fame matters to “Change of Heart” more than it should.
“You saw me?” Maggie asks her mother, who is usually so critical.
“On television,” her mother says admiringly. “Every channel, Maggie. Even CNN.”
Gosh it sounds worth reading for comic value. It's a great review that features a "wet hanky" of a character.
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