#67: Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
Despite what a big reader I am and what a prolific writer Jodi Picoult is, in the Venn diagram of books our paths never really crossed until a few days ago, when I borrowed Plain Truth from a friend of mine who is a big Picoult fan and has a whole slew of titles from the author’s backlist lining her shelves. (I’ve decided to abandon the one-sentence reviewing thing, as it’s hard to keep up and doesn’t give me as much room as I’d like.) I devoured Plain Truth in its entirety during two three-hour plane rides and one four-hour layover, and I have to say that I really liked it. It had the same pastoral feel as Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, and if it’s not necessarily as thematically deep and emotionally resonant as that novel, at least it has an original plot (Smiley steals hers from King Lear), not to mention a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the Amish. Picoult is a good writer, and although her plots sometimes veer towards the dramatic (there’s a reason why they’re always being made into Lifetime movies), there’s at least an emotional core to ground them.
