I read "my siseter's keeper" a few months ago. I liked it but at the same time I'm not sure that I really warmed to it. There is something about her books that I don't quite embrace ... I'm not sure why. But anyway, I had pretty much the same reaction to the ending as you did, Sara. I found it shocking and yes, manipulative is the word I used when I discussed it with others. I'm still not sure if I feel that it was really necessary or if it mainly functioned for emotional shock. I think this is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of hers .... her characters seem to reach a point that doesn't seem quite natural or true to the story.
Interesting also your comments about having different points of view. I did like this feature of the book. It gave a weight to the story that it might have lacked otherwise. Interestingly, I found the mother's voice the one I disliked the most. It is hard to write from different points of view within the same story. I wrote a Farscape fanfic which had POV from Moya, Aeryn and Chianna (although they were not first person) and this was certainly done a lot better in Jodi Picoult's story!

Its Jacqui again. Am sitting her thinking over what you said earlier about the restrictions of a first person POV. Do you mean from a reader's or a writer's perspective or both? I can sort of see what you mean and how in "My sister's keeper" (for instance) just having the one POV would have watered down the story a bit for the reader. I'm writing a story at the moment (which is driving me NUTS ...) and one of the things I wanted to do when I started it (among other things) was write it in the first person. I'm actually finding it quite freeing. I feel like I can really let the character soak through the story more. But this may say something more about my inexperience than anything else. Perhaps I'm just getting a little better?? Humm... guess this is enough procrastination for one day.

It was only after I'd finished the novel that I realised how subtly the ending was set up - Anna's full name was so much more pertinent in hindsight. I found that the first person narratives worked very well in this instance - I could not have warmed to Sarah as either a character or a mother otherwise - and the continually shifting POV was on the whole seamless.

You know, this book created all sorts of drama at work...there are, to this day, heated debates about Sarah's analogy that the only way she could rescue one child from a burning building was to send in her other...