A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

BOOK REVIEW:  A SPARK OF LIGHT by JODI PICOULT

Release Date: October 2nd, 2018

Genre: Adult Fiction

352 Pages

Published by Ballantine Books

My rating on Goodreads: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BOOK SYNOPSIS:

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center—a women’s reproductive health services clinic—its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters: A nurse who calms her own panic in order save the life of a wounded woman. A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before. A pro-life protester disguised as a patient, who now stands in the cross hairs of the same rage she herself has felt. A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy.

And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.
Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.

MY THOUGHTS:

Jodi Picoult tackled yet another controversial issue with this novel.  Abortion is not a simple "black and white" conversation and even as she points out in the book, "I don't think we, as a society will ever see eye-to-eye on this issue".

Only a skillful writer such as Picoult would be able to write about a controversial item without taking sides and/or trying to persuade the reader.  If you think you know every possible angle that involves abortion, think again, because as we get to hear the different thoughts and reasonings from opposite sides in this story, we remember how different we are from one another.   

The story is told in a reverse chronological order, so the first chapter is the end of the hostage negotiation with a cliffhanger.  Of course, as a reader, I just wanted to read fast, absorb it all and find out what happened.  At first, I didn't quite appreciate the reversal time aspect, but towards the end of the book I felt that the plot made a lot more sense this way, as we understood the paths each character took that brought them to that specific situation.

This book is emotionally profound, and like every Picoult's book, it is a necessary reading, that opens the possibility of both discussion and understanding of women's rights. 

It's a story that I highly recommend, but please do me a favor, read it with an open mind and maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, can start to understand and accept each other...