lernerj's Full Review: Jodi Picoult - The Tenth Circle: A Novel
Until The Tenth Circle, I’d never read a Jodi Picoult book. But I kept hearing good things about her work, and when the bright red coat on the cover of The Tenth Circle caught my eye in the library just before I left on a cross-country trip, I decided to give her a try. Several hundred pages later, I can’t quite put my finger on whether I liked the book or not.
The Tenth Circle is a unique and somewhat jarring combination of several common and not-so-common elements. It is, at root, a family drama, the tale of two parents and a teenage daughter dealing with family secrets, betrayals, violence, and the daily struggle to live honestly with others and with oneself. Because Daniel Stone, the father, is a comic writer/artist, each chapter also concludes with several pages of the comic he is writing, which parallels the events in his life in mostly obvious ways. The comic and other parts of the story are also littered with references to the nine circles of hell as portrayed in Dante’s Inferno, which is the mother, Laura’s, scholarly specialty (she’s a college professor). And finally, as an additional layer of thematic complexity, the story and characters often draw upon Inuit imagery, as Daniel’s difficult childhood took place in Alaska. And in addition to these family dynamics and their unusual mix of influences, a police officer and the mysteries he attempts to solve surrounding the Stone family also play a key role in the book and its drama.
As this variety of themes and influences suggests, The Tenth Circle is certainly unique. While it deals with classic themes of family loyalty, betrayal, life paths, and truth and honesty, it does so in a context that is both mundane (life in a small town in New England) and much bigger than the particular case of Daniel and Laura Stone and their daughter. Picoult is at her best when she writes the thoughts, conversations, and little gestures that make up family interactions. Her treatment of all three central characters—Daniel, Laura, and their daughter Trixie—was convincing. Further, the drama in which the family was increasingly enmeshed kept me reading; Picoult made me curious to find out what was the truth and what wasn’t as new details about one fateful night in Trixie’s life kept unfolding.
And yet, although I felt compelled to keep reading, the book also often put me off with its mix of unusual settings and elements. I found the comic book pages annoying to look at and hard to follow, and the regular references to The Inferno palatable but mostly unnecessary. Daniel’s history in Alaska and the use of Inuit mythology and insights seemed even more forced than the comic book element to the text. Any one of these elements might have enriched the book on its own, but with the three thrown together, the book seemed disjointed and a bit too clever for itself, like something a young writer would put together to prove she could come up with really creative stories. With the police detective element added to the story as well, the book increasingly seemed like several books in one as I read through its second half.
In the end, I would recommend The Tenth Circle only marginally. It’s a fine read for a lazy weekend or a vacation book—not an outstanding read, but enough to keep you interested and likely to keep you reading to the end.
Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone is in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father, Daniel's life - a straight-A student; a pretty, popu...More at HotBookSale
From the Publisher: Jodi Picoult, the New York Times bestselling author of Vanishing Acts, offers her most powerful chronicle yet of an American famil...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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