Will Jane go back with Oliver? What will happen to Oliver if she doesn't go back? How will Oliver change his ways of paying more attention to his work then his family? These are a few questions that I asked myself while reading this spellbinding book, Songs of the Humpback Whale, by Jodi Picoult. A cultivating novel about a woman that lives in the shadows of her husband, but escapes with their fifteen year old daughter and peregrinated across the country to meet her brother to seek her decision.
A distinctive novel is hard to achieve in the world of writing, but Jodi Picoult succeeds. Because of this achievement, she is able to write a more complex and a 'stop-and-think' novel: a five-voice novel. Mrs. Picoult articulates each eccentric characters feeling so that I could sense the setting in which that individual is in. With every turn of the page, she attains this marvelous aspect by using various fonts, and describes every detail that makes it a book that I could not put down.
Hooking the reader is what Jodi Picoult is all about. Just by opening to a page and reading the first sentence, I was addicted. This fantastic author uses words and phrases that bring life to every sentence she writes. Using phrases like, ' emotionally charged,' is what every book needs so that the reader can feel attached to the novel. Another way Mrs. Picoult hooked me was how she verbalizes so much feeling and emotion that it gives it the essence that I was there looking at the scene that was being described. Because the first thing you see in the book is its' cover, I am either drawn to it or pulled away. The cover of this novel is an apple orchard, but the title of the book is Songs of the Humpback Whale; it made me think. One of my favorite parts that made me habituated to this novel was when Oliver is communicating to the reader what he is thinking at the moment when he first sees his wife and daughter after they had left.

In this phenomenal novel, the one thing that related to me personally was one of the cross-country journeys. Oliver's story is about finding himself and viewing the world from a different perspective: his wife's. Although I am not married, I relate to this story because he is so caught up in his work that he hardly thinks of his family and the people around him and doesn't see the battles from the standing-point of other people. I am sort of in that because I think I need to see the world from the eyes of the people that are fighting a battle and comprehend what they are sintiendo.

Reading this lucid anecdote from each character's eyes allows me to be the outsider. 'No,' I kept reciting, wanting to tell the character what to do, but Jodi Picoult keeps me 'out there' by frustrating me with interesting character developments, and their self-discoveries, always leading me to another event or crisis. As I read, I can see scenes flash in front of me, like watching a motion picture in my head. I see each characters' struggle through their lives' path and watch them grow until the end, when the jigsaw pieces are merged together. For this reason, I think this book is a must read for my age group, because of its complexity and aggravating page-turning dilemma.