Book review: Sing You Home – Jodie Picoult

In these baby-booming times this book will likely strike a chord with a few people. Being about human infertility and the unrelenting desire to have a child, this isn’t a happy book.  All of our main characters are struggling with recognisable demons and it takes almost half the book for them to truly become likeable.  Despite all of that I’m a little bit in love with this novel, so much so that I sat up to 2am one night in order to finish it.  It is genuinely unputdownable.

After nine years of fertility treatment, Zoe still doesn’t have a baby.  After being advised to give up on her dream of motherhood due to ill health, Zoe refuses.  A baby is more important than her health.  Her husband, Max, doesn’t agree and instead files for divorce.  Time passes and Zoe falls in love again – with a woman!  Unfortunately Max also falls in love, only his new love affair is with God.  When Zoe approaches Max for the rights over three frozen embryos they have remaining from IVF, Max approaches his church for advice.  From there things start to get messy for Zoe.

This novel may be a clash between gay rights and religion, but it in no way demonises either.  Jodie Picoult is careful to develop her main characters in order for us to really understand their motivations.  No one person is in the wrong here and all are trying to do what they think is right.  Ultimately Zoe and her ex-husband have to make big decisions and we, the reader, can only stand by helplessly and hope for the best.  A very moving book.

Review by Ida Raine