Publisher's Weekly Review
As Picoult uses five voices to tell a complex tale of love, friendship and a Faulknerian family history, her mastery of language strongly individuates her characters. The primary voice in this accomplished first novel belongs to Jane Jones, a speech pathologist living in San Diego, Calif. Other narrators are her daughter Rebecca; her husband, Oliver, a marine biologist renowned for his research on the songs of humpback whales; her brother Joley; and her lover, Sam. When an argument between Jane and Oliver culminates in her striking him, Jane is shattered. A childhood victim of physical and sexual abuse, Jane has tried to submerge her memories, but this outbreak of violence causes her to reexamine her life. On a cross-country automobile trip, Jane and Rebecca travel to Stow, Mass., where Joley is living and where each woman meets the man she believes is her destiny. Jane relates the events that occur from San Diego to Stow, while Rebecca tells the story in reverse, flashing back from the climax. Their stories intersect in an Iowa cornfield that still bears the wreckage of the airliner on which then-three-year-old Rebecca was being sent back to her father during her parents' earlier separation; she was one of five survivors. This powerful and affecting novel demonstrates that there are as many truths to a story as there are people to tell it. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A family crosses the continent to find themselves, which they do on an apple farm in Massachusetts, in one of those too carefully crafted first novels in which literary ambition exacts a toll greater than a minor work can afford. This would-be epic of self-discovery is told in alternate chapters by the three travellers from California--Jane Jones, daughter Rebecca, and husband Oliver, a well-known whale-expert- -with supplementary voices provided by Sam, the apple farmer, and Joley, Jane's brother and Sam's assistant. Rebecca tells her version of the journey backwards--a journey that begins in their San Diego home when Oliver announces that he'll have to miss Rebecca's upcoming 15th birthday, and Jane, no longer able to contain her pent-up frustrations and anger, hits him. Fearing that she's becoming like her father, Jane, joined by Rebecca, flees the house and heads across the country to Joley, who adores Jane, his childhood protector against their abusive father. The trip, which includes a visit to the site of the air crash in which toddler Rebecca was one of five survivors, is planned by Joley to make Jane finally use the ``untapped strength'' she has ignored. Oliver goes after them, but as he travels he too realizes that this journey has a deeper purpose. On the farm both Rebecca and Jane fall in love, but a tragic accident, Joley's advice to leave because ``sometimes the ideal way isn't the best,'' and Oliver's confession of love and repentance--all will convince Jane to go back home. ``It is the first time I can remember,'' she says, ``having my eyes wide open while I look at my future.'' And about time. Picoult tries to do more with the old cliché of wife and family coming to terms with the past, but it isn't enough. The cliché lives, while the characters and the story struggle--and fail--to survive the author's pretensions.
Library Journal Review
This uniquely constructed first novel, the literary equivalent of counterpoint in music, is told in five voices whose polyphonic development delineates a multifaceted love story on different levels for different individuals. These voices belong to five characters--Jane, who has sacrificed her life to her oceanographer husband's career; her daughter, Rebecca, whom Jane seeks to protect; and three very different men in their lives. As Jane heads east from San Diego with her daughter, having abandoned her husband to his whale tapes, the characters' contrapuntal recollections offer psychological insights into their lives. These insights lead to growth, second chances, and love. Charming and poignant, Picoult's novel is even better after a second reading. For public libraries.-- Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
