CHANGE OF HEARTJodi PicoultHodder & Stoughton, £16.99
IN HER newsletter for devotees, which is called Pi-Cult, Jodi Picoult describes doing research for her new novel, Change Of Heart. Some of it took her
to a prison in Arizona, where she found herself right next to the lethal-injection gurney while discussing the death penalty with the warden. She also visited a gas chamber. She spoke with a condemned man.
But not even the most cultish Picoult fans are likely to think Picoult broke a sweat while preparing Change Of Heart. Despite her grim diligence and earnestly religion-based story line, she seems to have written her latest tear-jerker on authorial autopilot. When writers become this popular, they can coast in ways not possible for the up-and-coming.
As she has done repeatedly, Picoult dramatises an argument fit for a debating team. This book's topic is restorative justice. Its premise is built on unhappy coincidence. What if a bad man murdered a nice woman's husband? What if he killed her daughter too? What if she had another daughter? What if 11 years later, as the date for the bad man's execution approached, the second daughter needed a new heart?
What if the bad man wanted to make amends with an organ transplant? What if he wanted to give his bad heart to the innocent child? As Picoult puts it, in the bold, high-concept idiom of movie ads: "Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?" Let's put it another way: if you were that mother, would it take you 447 pages to make up your mind?
Change Of Heart is complicated by the miraculous powers of the condemned man. He is a 33-year-old carpenter who sounds familiar. He cures the sick, turns water into wine, feeds the hungry (albeit with bubble gum) and revives a dead baby bird. His name is Isaiah M Bourne, which can be shortened to I M Bourne, which can be read as "I am born" in boldface type in a book blessed with the subtlety of a jackhammer. Isaiah is known as Shay, but he also acquires a nickname: "the Death Row Messiah".
Change Of Heart is narrated by several characters, each with a different way of elbowing the reader's ribs. The book's sort-of-hip clergyman is Father Michael. He has two jobs here: to give the plot yet another wrenching twist (he still regrets having been on the jury that gave Shay Bourne the death penalty) and to blurt out intimations of Shay's divinity.
Among the novel's other principals is June Nealon, the woman who lost her daughter and husband. June is full of grief and anger, but otherwise lacking any distinguishing characteristics. June's blandness is more than made up for by Maggie Bloom, a lawyer who takes on Shay's case despite her own insecurities.
Maggie was raised as a Jew, but she is not religious – at least not until she gets a load of Shay and his aura. She has a father who is a clergyman and a pet bunny she has named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Maggie likes to chat with Oliver, the better to make this book needlessly long yet not really lively. It's anyone's guess whether Picoult accidentally put a rabbi and a rabbit into the same book or was trying to win a bet.
Had Change Of Heart culminated in revelations that were truly plausible or unexpected, its vapidity might have been transcended. But there is no substance to the story's last surprises.
They don't fit the characters or match what has come before. Nor do the last scenes bring an epiphany, unless you count what happens to Maggie. Her courtroom brilliance brings her a whiff of celebrity. Though this book is nominally about faith and justice, fame matters more than it should.
"You saw me?" Maggie asks her mother, who is usually so critical.
"On television," her mother says admiringly. "Every channel, Maggie. Even CNN."
The full article contains 699 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
