Sunday 12 February 2012

Sing you Home - Jodi Picoult


Sing you Home by Jodi Picoult, Hodder & Stoughton, 424 pages

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆


There was no room in my marriage for me anymore, except as genetic material. (p. 44)
Zoe, a music therapist, and Max, who has his own landscaping business, have been trying to conceive for years, but to no avail. Zoe is desperate to have a baby, but Max is close to giving up and feels that trying to get pregnant has taken over their marriage. As the costs of IVF treatment spiral and tensions between them mount, the situation comes to a head when Zoe miscarries and Max, buckling under the strain, leaves the relationship. Max moves in with his married, successful brother, and founders in a fog of self-loathing and alcoholism. When his uncontrolled drinking leads to a car accident, Max experiences an epiphany of sorts, quits drinking and joins his brother’s evangelical Christian church which is led by the smooth, populist Pastor Clive.

In music, perfect pitch is the ability to reproduce a tone without any reference to an external standard. (...) In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself. (p. 135)
In the meantime, Zoe does her own grieving over the miscarriage and reels from blow after blow from life: her divorce, the diagnosis of a thromboembolism, and finally endometrial cancer, which necessitates a hysterectomy. Zoe finds help and friendship in Vanessa, a school counsellor. Completely compatible, they eventually find their relationship has blossomed into love, and decide to get married. Much as she loves Vanessa, Zoe is hesitant to come out to anyone about their relationship – she feels it should be no one’s business but her and Vanessa’s. Luckily, she realises that coming out for her is not so much about identifying as a lesbian but about showing loyalty to her partner. Zoe finds a great deal of support in her mother, who is thrilled to see her in a supportive, functional relationship for a change.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. There is no language to describe a betrayal this big. (...) ‘He’s trying to take away our baby.’ (p. 238)
Max, however, shares the bigoted views of his church, and sees Zoe’s relationship with a woman as an affront to his own masculinity. It is no surprise, then, that when Zoe asks his permission to retrieve one of the frozen embryos left over from their IVF treatment so that Vanessa can give birth to her baby, he allows his church leaders to escalate the couple’s disagreement to a highly publicised court case.
The church argues that being a lesbian couple makes Zoe and Vanessa unfit to become parents, and Zoe and Vanessa point out that Max – a very recently recovered alcoholic living in his brother’s basement – is in no position to be a father. The couple’s lawyer forces Max to reveal that he actually intends to give the embryo his brother, who is infertile like Max, so that he and his wife can raise the baby. Their argument is that this is even more of a non-traditional family model and, what is more, the biological mother would not be allowed access to the child because of Max’s homophobic views. With a conservative, nearly retired judge presiding, the scales of justice could tip either way, and drama mounts when we learn about Max’s affair with his sister-in-law and an accusation of sexual harassment from Zoe’s patient who also happens to be Pastor Clive’s daughter.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would recommend it as the discerning reader’s light read J As in other books by Jodi Picoult, weighty and relevant issues are explored with arguments from both sides being given voice. The Biblical rationale for the church’s disapproval of gay adoption is explained well, and it’s clear that although Pastor Clive and his cronies are far from the true spirit of Christianity, the rank and file of the congregation – people like Libby, Max’s sister in law – are mostly good people who try to follow scripture and love their neighbour. Zoe and Vanessa’s relationship, in turn, is fairly portrayed as a healthy, stable partnership where both women can thrive and depend on one another; it stands in stark contrast with Max’s needy, immature behaviour as a husband. It is clear where the author weighs in on the issue of equal rights for LGBT couples, and I hope most readers will also feel the same way, but the opposing side in the argument is given generous and fair treatment.
I have only two complaints. For one, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the ‘homosexuality is not a choice’ argument. Whether or not sexual orientation is genetically determined, it should not be viewed in the same light as cancer or disfigurement. The novel focuses very strongly on this argument, and the author comes close to saying that being gay is not Vanessa or Zoe’s ‘fault’, thereby playing into the evangelical Christian argument that homosexuality is ‘wrong’ or ‘sinful’.
Secondly, my copy of the book included QR codes that linked to a website with music accompanying each chapter. It certainly is an innovative and fun idea, but unfortunately I found the music to be unpleasant if not absolutely dire! Insistent rhymes in the lyrics and high-pitched, piercing vocals made it very difficult for me to listen to, and I stopped after the first track. A real shame and a wasted opportunity, in my opinion.

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