The Tenth Circle - Review
Seniors will enjoy Jodi Picoult's newest suspense tale
Jodi Picoult is a fairly young woman, but her writing is mature and well-developed. She's written about a dozen novels. If you haven't read her - now's your chance.
The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
A review by Maryan Pelland
Atria Books, ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9670-4, Mar. 7, 2006, 387 pp, $26.00 U.S./$36.00 Can.
For some, hell is a concept; for others, hell is inside ourselves where we confront personal truths. In the The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult explores dark places in perfect suburban lives. It's easy to understand her best-seller status. Her latest novel's twists and suspense will satisfy the most adrenaline-addicted reader.
Picoult's writing has matured. In Plain Truth, an early book, she explored the suspicious death of an unwed Amish mother's baby, nailing the battle between self and culture but filtering it through a soft lens. An occasional faulty detail pulled us out of the plot. Like this - a character, cruising a Wisconsin highway in early June muses about seeing corn in full tassel. Not going to happen in June, and anyone who knows that snaps right out of the story. There are no such slips in The Tenth Circle.
As the book opens, we get to know Laura, Daniel and Trixie in reminiscences and well-crafted conversations. All looks pretty normal, but a pointed uneasiness lurks. The novel, like a proverbial onion, unfolds in layers. The more we delve, the more Picoult shows us.
Laura and Daniel are role models of perfect middle class family life. She's a college professor; Daniel is a successful graphic novel artist, a stay-at-home dad who dotes on his daughter. We meet Daniel in a prologue reliving a parent's horror - his baby daughter is missing. We're shown that this is only the first time Daniel has to cope with the loss of his child. Trixie, a great kid, good student, pretty-as-a-picture, rebellious, and 15 years-old, will be gone again. Another layer.
Daniel grew up in an Eskimo village where his mother was the only teacher. He was the only white child. For children, different is terrible. For Daniel, the teasing was bad, but his self-inflicted feelings of exclusion from the clan were intolerable. With fists and rage he lashed out against his own demons, but held everyone else at fault. Stealing, drinking, fighting - then committing an unforgivable crime against his best friend, Cane. Daniel runs. From Alaska and from himself.
In Boston, buried in his art of creating graphic novels, he meets Laura, balm for unhealed wounds. She ends up pregnant and intimidated by his dark side. To win her for keeps, he clamps down on his wild streak, blanketing himself in middle-class normalcy like it's one of those protective bunny suits hazmat teams wear. He never wavers and, for fifteen years, life is uncannily right. Then that layer peels away and Trixie's tragedy sets fire to Daniel's fuse again.
"Daddy, he raped me...."
Those words ignite an explosion of action, emotion, confrontation and terror. Nothing is what it seems. Picoult must have set her keyboard on fire as she wrote. The energy and tumble-down acceleration is extraordinary. We follow 15 year-old Trixie on a 4100 mile Odyssey to strip away the final layers for that sense of closure critical to a good read. No lame gimmicks - real truths show the Stone family in sharp, unflinching detail.
Picoult's chapter transitions are intriguing with frame-by-frame segments of Daniel's graphic novel as an effective bridging device. Alternating between Picoult's plot and the graphic novel is fun, a place to catch your breath.
No novel is perfect, but it's tough to pick at this story's continuity. I wasn't aware of misplaced details. Picoult's complexity put me off at first. She's fond of omniscient point-of-view and, until I caught the rhythm of switching between her places, times and characters' thoughts, I felt disoriented. Was I inside Daniel's head or Laura's? Was it the present or the past? The author, herself, calls the project a "massive undertaking," and the research had to have been extreme. It shows with richness and texture. I tripped over minor pacing bumps at the beginning, but in the end, that complexity made the story as engaging as a fine game of cat's cradle.
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