My Sister's Keeper

I've just finished reading Jodi Picoult's "My Sister's Keeper"....been reading it since Taipei...but only managed to finish it today, while lying on my bed, drenching my pillow...and i was right...Hollywood has once again distorted the whole book...really, these days, you can't expect to answer someone who asks you "have you read the book?" with a "oh, i've watched the movie"....and still be discussing about the same story...coz chances are, the book-reader and the movie-watcher would be talking about 2 different stories...i think i'll stick to reading original books...and watching original movies...

It's one thing to drop a character or two...or change a male judge to a female judge...or change a pyromaniac elder brother to a dyslexic one...but to kill off the wrong sister in the end? you might as well call the movie by a different name and claim it as original screenplay...it's not like i didn't like the movie...i did...it was a good movie...the actors played their roles very well...i just don't like the idea of Hollywood misleading people to think that what they watched would equal to what they would have read (but which they didn't)...it's like Hansel and Gretel being lured by the witch to her candy-bejewelled house only for them to find out they'd be burnt in the furnace as food for the witch... ok, maybe my analogue is a bit off...but you get the picture...

So just a short synopsis about My Sister's Keeper (the original book version)...Anna (short for Andromeda) was genetically engineered to be a perfect donor match for her elder sister Kate... Kate was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia at age 3...Anna became stem cells donor for Kate at birth...and continued to donate more blood products and bone marrow throughout her childhood...Anna at age 13 is required to donate her kidney to Kate (now a miraculous survivor of APML at age 16) who has end-stage renal failure due to all her previous treatments...but Anna didn't want to do be a donor anymore...so she filed a lawsuit against her parents for medical emancipation...

I loved this book....it may not be a real life story...but the characters portrayed by the author are so realistic...so human...i hardly cried though...which is a good measure of how real this book is...i only cry when reading unrealistic stuffs...but i cried at the end when Anna died...she fought all the way to get herself medically emancipated from her parents and won...but she still lost to Death...the one whom everyone thought would die, didn't...but i guess that's life...always throwing the unexpected your way...i feel for Anna...it must be horrible to live a life defined by your elder sister...where you're only needed to save your sister's life...yea, sounds very magnanimous and all...but put yourself in Anna's shoes...it's easy to have magnanimous thoughts when you can't be the donor...it's not so easy when you are the only perfect matched donor...if i were Anna, i'd hate my parents for putting me through all those invasive procedures just for the sake of my sick sister...it's like, in that family, if you're not sick to the point of dying, then you don't count...

I think i'll start collecting Jodi Picoult's books...they're interesting reads...definitely worth the investment...if you're a reader...then skip the movie...