Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She’s on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: prepare for a crash landing. As thoughts flash through her mind, Dawn braces herself for impact. The shocking thing is the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years earlier. Miraculously, Dawn survives the crash, but so do all the doubts she suddenly feels. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, she has her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, someone who helps to ease the transition between life and death for her clients. But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon. What does a well-lived life look like? When we leave the earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices or do our choices make us? And, who would you be, if you hadn’t turned into the person you are right now?
Jodi Picoult has been my go-to for a couple of decades. This is her latest book and the twentieth I’ve read, only having missed a few on the backlist over the years. Her novels are highly readable and always include a controversial issue that gets examined on all sides and through the opposing views of several characters who are faced with moral choices.
The Book of Two Ways features an unusual mix of topics which do weave together well: Egyptology, relationship, and insight into the work of a death doula. It was the latter I appreciated the most. Learning about this compassionate profession, that like a birth doula guiding a transition into life, a death doula guides a person into the final transition into death. It’s beautiful how Picoult describes this important work that supports not only the one dying, but the whole family.
Unfortunately she missed the boat for me with the Egypt archeology aspect which was vaguely interesting but never truly came alive, and the relationship/marriage exploration, I’m sorry to say, which I found downright shallow and cliché. And the ending…well, some may say it’s brilliant but I found it a cheap shot. I also felt some confusion around timelines and plane crash details… anyone else experience this? The book does have a kicker of an opening line, “My calendar is full of dead people.”
Joanne's Reading Blog 