This review was originally published on Tumblr on January 28, 2017 as part of an old project of mine, the Diverse/Lady Book Project. In migrating to Substack, I’ve decided to reproduce this post here, for consistency. And because I lost a bunch of old book reviews when other bloggers deleted them from their websites. Please enjoy 2017 Amanda’s review of Small Great Things.
I’ve been reading Jodi Picoult books since high school, and with each new book she wrote, my opinion of her would change. I’m sure that’s not what writers want to hear from their readers, but in this case, it’s true. When she was classic JP—writing about one single incident and how it changed the relationships in a single family—that’s when I loved her the most. Books like My Sister’s Keeper, The Pact, and Nineteen Minutes—those were peak Jodi Picoult, in my opinion. Her more recent books were… different. The last one was about a psychic and elephants, and the one before that was about a concentration camp. (Obviously there are more to these books than that, but I don’t want to spoil things.) But this one? Oh, Small Great Things was exactly what I love about Jodi Picoult books. An incident. A case. A trial. Characters that keep me up at night. These are the JP books that I love to the very core of my being.
I don’t like giving too much away when I write these reviews, but I’ll outline this a little. It’s a bit outside what I’m typically going to go for in the #diverseladybookproject, but it’s been on my TBR since it came out in October. Here’s the general synopisis: a white supremacist and his wife (Turk and Brittany) have a baby, and they request that the black nurse (Ruth) who is on call doesn’t treat him. Ruth is the only one around when the baby goes into respiratory arrest, and Ruth hesitates. So Turk and Brittany press charges against Ruth. That’s where the book gets interesting (and is kind of a garbage fire, but I’ll get into that).
3 Things I Loved
1. Edison wanting to be a lawyer. One of my favorite scenes was after one of Ruth’s trial days. Her high school aged son, Edison, comes home asking if he’d make a good lawyer, because he wants to help people. I just loved it—it’s the reason I wanted to be a lawyer for so long.
2. Micah. Kennedy (Ruth’s attorney) is married to ophthalmologist Micah. There was something about his character that I loved in all parts of the book—he supports his wife, he’s a super cute dad to their daughter, and he points out when Kennedy is being a little bit racist, whether she realizes it or not. He’s the epitome of babe husband side character (is that a thing?), and I would read a whole book about his relationship with Kennedy.
3. Ruth and Kennedy’s relationship. It’s a beautiful thing that grows with time. There are some spots that are tough, and Ruth even fires Kennedy at one point, but they endure. They learn from each other. They grow together. And I loved reading about it.
4. (Bonus!) Turk’s growth. I don’t want to give anything away, but Turk turns into a character I actually empathize with by the end of the book. Go figure! You’ll have to read to learn why, though.
Anything Problematic?
Well. I was expecting to have to go into detail about how this book was written by a white woman who could never truly capture a person of color’s experience. But it wasn’t true. Like always, JP did her research. I thought it was super well-done.
However, I do want to mention that there need to be trigger warnings about this book. Racial, homophobic, and other types of slurs are used throughout the book, mostly during the chapters from Turk’s perspective. I get that it needed to be done in order to tell an accurate story from the perspective of a white supremacist, but still—it was hard to read in parts. There were times when I didn’t know if the people Turk was attacking lived or died. I could easily see how this could be hurtful for someone to read who has experienced the hate of a person like Turk in real life.
Which, sadly, might be basically all of us for the next four years.
Rating
A reminder of the rating scale:
Red = DNF, I hated everything
Orange = Ugh, no thank you
Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
Green = This was good, but not something I’d reread
Blue = Oh my gosh, everyone should be reading this book
Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart
White people should read this book. I know that seems blunt, but they should. Even if you think you’re woke and all, you’ll learn something about racism by reading it. Trust me. So, based on that assessment, I’m going to give this book a GREEN rating. I chose green rather than blue because of the trigger warnings and the fact that I’m not going to reread it anytime soon. It was hard to get through in that way that makes me know I learned things from it. But it was GOOD, and I do think that it should be read as widely as possible.