After more than a year of living in a global pandemic, it’s hard to remember a time before COVID-19. Jodi Picoult’s new book takes us back to those frightening early days when a strange virus started wreaking havoc.
Diana O’Toole lives in New York and her life is going perfectly to plan. She has a dream job at Sotheby’s, is about to turn 30 and is sure her gorgeous doctor boyfriend, Finn, will pop the question on their dream holiday.
But it’s March 2020 and coronavirus has arrived in New York. With all health workers needed, Finn can’t take time off so Diana travels to the Galapagos Islands alone. She arrives, her luggage doesn’t, and the island suddenly shuts down. Stranded, her life stripped back to bare essentials, Diana connects with a local family. Enjoying a slower and more peaceful pace, she starts to look anew at her life. After suffering a near-death experience, she returns home but struggles to settle into her old existence.
With COVID-19 changing everything, it’s fascinating to see authors weaving the ‘new normal’ into stories. Diana’s story takes us from the emergence to the aftermath and the lottery of life, death and second chances. How do you react when life is turned upside down and everything you believed is called into question? While COVID-19 provides the backdrop, this story of complex human emotions encompasses so much more than the virus.
Reviewed by Melinda Woledge
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JODI PICOULT
Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels, including Mad Honey, Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page.
Picoult’s books have been translated into thirty-four languages in thirty-five countries. Four novels – The Pact. Plain Truth. The Tenth Circle. and Salem Falls – have been made into television movies. My Sister’s Keeper was a film released from New Line Cinema, with Nick Cassavetes directing and Cameron Diaz starring. Mad Honey is currently in development for a series/film. Small Great Things has been optioned for motion picture adaptation. Picoult also wrote five issues of DC Comic’s Wonder Woman.
Picoult is the co-librettist for the stage musical adaptation of her two Young Adult novels, Picoult’s two Young Adult novels, Between The Lines and Off The Page, co-written with her daughter Samantha Van Leer, which premiered Off-Broadway in Summer 2021 and will be licensed through Music Theatre International during the fall of 2022. She is also the co-librettist of the musical BREATHE, which was inducted into the Library of Congress’s Performing Arts COVID-19 Response Collection; and of the musical adaptation of THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak, which will play at the Coventry Belgrade and the Leicester Curve in the fall of 2023.
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