Name: Your Name
Book: Vanishing Acts
Author: Jodi Picoult
Published: 2005
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Cordelia, or Delia, is on a mission to find the truth of her mother's death, and bring back memories that will help her find the truth of her troubled past. But to do this, she must be willing to ask questions that have painful and sad answers.
Jodi Picoult is an amazing writer who puts you right into the story as the silent bystander who can do nothing but watch as the story unfolds. Similar to her book My Sister's Keeper, she writes each chapter from a different perspective. With every twist in the book, she hides another one behind your back. She has a knack for deceiving you. The twists in this book are about what Delia and you thought happened compared to the actual event. For example, she thinks and was told that someone who was close to her "kidnapping" by her father. Ms. Picoult lets you decide if it wa actually a kidnapping. The reader hears about the kidnapping from so many points of view though, it's hard to decide what exactly happened. It's kind of like an indirect debate between the characters.
Because of the storyline and the dynamic characters this book reminds me of another by Ms. Picoult, My Sister's Keeper. I believe Ms. Picoult is a character writer. She makes characters with such strong personalities that it's easy to make the whole story, because the story is each character's perspective. She is not the kind of writer who shows you the personality of each character by describing the character right off, but builds their character bit by bit throughout the book. The reader has to wait until the end to figure out who they really are. That is one of the reasons one can tell both books are by the same author.
Vanishing Acts also reminds me of "Deja Vu", the film, because of all the deception hidden from view. In Vanishing Acts, readers are not only deceived, but so is Delia. In "Deja Vu" almost everybody involved in being misled. They also relate to each other because there are questions needed to be asked in "Deja Vu" to make everything work out. The same is true with Vanishing Acts.
Vanishing Acts also reminds me of Speak, but instead of Melinda coming out to tell her secrets, Delia has to come out and seek answers to her questions. Each character in this book has their own flaws, which makes this book so easy to relate to. It's not so simple as "good" guys and "bad" guys, which is one of the reasons I like this book so much. Instead of "bad" guys, each character fights themself. One can't pick sides in this story, becaus one's mind changes in the next chapter.
I rate this book an eight out of ten, because of the empathy I felt for the characters. Unlike My Sister's Keeper, it doesn't have so many things that I can relate to personally. However, it relates well to human in general. Delia learns to find her identity, just as most people struggle to do. We want to know where we stand in this troubled world, and where the people amongst us stand. In my opinion, the only weak point in this book is that it follows the exact same formula as My Sister's Keeper, but involves a different controversial issue. Not only does this revolve around Delia, this book concerns many characters with their own, individual, flaws. So many lives correlate with hers that by helping her, they help themselves.
Picoult leads you into this world of troubled lives and by doing that gives the reader a chance to think about different perspectives in the real world.