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The Tenth Circle: A Novel |  |
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The Tenth Circle: A Novel | |
With The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult offers her most powerful chronicle yet as she explores the unbreakable bond between parent and child, and questions whether you can reinvent yourself in the course of a lifetime -- or if your mistakes are carried forever.
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Amazon.com
Bestselling author Jodi Picoult''s The Tenth Circle is a metaphorical journey through Dante''s Inferno, told through the eyes of a small Maine family whose hidden demons haunt every aspect of their seemingly peaceful existence. Woven throughout the novel are a series of dramatic illustrations that pay homage to the family''s patriarch (comic book artist Daniel Stone), and add a unique twist to this gripping, yet somewhat rhetorical tale.
Trixie Stone is an imaginative, perceptive 14 year old whose life begins to unravel when Jason Underhill, Bethel High''s star hockey player, breaks up with her, leaving a void that can only be filled by the blood spilled during shameful self-mutilations in the girls'' bathroom. While Trixie''s dad Daniel notices his daughter''s recent change in demeanor, he turns a blind eye, just as he does to the obvious affair his wife Laura, a college professor, is barely trying to conceal. When Trixie gets raped at a friend''s party, Daniel and Laura are forced to deal not only with the consequences of their daughter''s physical and emotional trauma, but with their own transgressions as well. For Daniel, that means reflecting on a childhood spent as the only white kid in a native Alaskan village, where isolation and loneliness turned him into a recluse, only to be born again after falling in love with his wife. Laura, who blames her family''s unraveling on her selfish affair, must decide how to reconcile her personal desires with her loved ones'' needs.
The Tenth Circle is chock full of symbolism and allegory that at times can seem oppresive. Still, Picoult''s fans will welcome this skillfully told story of betrayal and its many negative, and positive consequences. --Gisele Toueg --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Some of Picoult''s best storytelling distinguishes her twisting, metaphor-rich 13th novel (after Vanishing Acts) about parental vigilance gone haywire, inner demons and the emotional risks of relationships. Comic book artist Daniel Stone is like the character in his graphic novel with the same title as this book—once a violent youth and the only white boy in an Alaskan Inuit village, now a loving, stay-at-home dad in Bethel, Maine—traveling figuratively through Dante''s circles of hell to save his 14-year-old teenage daughter, Trixie. After she accuses her ex-boyfriend of rape, Trixie—and Daniel, whose fierce father-love morphs to murderous rage toward her assailant—unravel in the aftermath of the allegation. At the same time, wife and mother Laura, a Dante scholar, tries to mend her and Daniel''s marriage after ending her affair with one of her students. Picoult has collaborated with graphic artist Dustin Weaver to illustrate her deft, complex exploration of Daniel and his beast within, but the drawings, though well-done, distract from the powerful picture she has drawn with words. Laura and Daniel follow their runaway daughter to Alaska, at which point Picoult drives the story with the heavy-handed Dante metaphor—not the characters. Still, this story of a flawed family on the brink of destruction grips from start to finish.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post''s Book World/washingtonpost.com
Drivers crossing the Maine border are greeted by a sign proclaiming "Maine: The Way Life Should Be." Readers approaching the same territory in Jodi Picoult''s new novel, The Tenth Circle, should be warned "Maine: The Way Life Really Is."
Picoult, whose 12 previous books include the bestsellers Vanishing Acts and My Sister''s Keeper, spins fast-paced tales of family dysfunction, betrayal and redemption, often set in northern New England (she lives in New Hampshire). The Tenth Circle, a grimly entertaining if overplotted tale of a Bethel, Maine, family blasted apart by the teenage daughter''s date rape, hews closely to the concerns of Picoult''s earlier work.
Fourteen-year-old Trixie is the much-loved only child of Daniel and Laura Stone. Daniel is an artist for Marvel Comics. Laura is a prominent Dante scholar at (fictional) Monroe College. They seem like one of those mismatched couples whose marriage triumphantly defies the odds -- Laura the straitlaced scholar, Daniel the former Alaskan wild man who cleaned up to become a full-time father once Trixie was born.
And Trixie? Bright, loving, sensitive Trixie is the dream child who, overnight, becomes every parent''s nightmare. At the beginning of her freshman year, she has a prized older boyfriend -- Jason, a high school hockey champion. But when The Tenth Circle opens, Jason has just broken up with her. Not altogether unkindly, as it turns out, but the split devastates Trixie. Weeks afterward, still reeling from the rejection, Trixie rushes from her psych class to vomit in the girls'' bathroom. She begins cutting herself, first with a broken mirror and then with her father''s razor.
Parents of teenage children will shudder at how her best friend Zephyr tries to cheer her up: She hosts a party while her mother is out of town, complete with alcohol, drugs and sex games. Picoult''s depiction of these rites of contemporary adolescence is exceptional: unflinching, unjudgmental, utterly chilling. Jason is at the party, too. After most of the other guests have left, they begin a game of strip poker. Trixie, desperate to win him back, seems happy to play along, until things go too far, and Jason rapes her.
This event and its immediate aftermath are the most powerful parts of the novel. As Picoult notes, one in six American women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape during her lifetime. Those who have survived a sexual assault will recognize Trixie''s subsequent dissociation, the cold horror of the emergency room and police interview, the sense of a life being irrevocably broken, as well as the rage and guilt of Trixie''s parents. Trixie accuses Jason of rape, but when her name is leaked to local media, she''s ostracized and tormented by her schoolmates, who accuse her of having been a willing participant.
If Picoult had retained this tight focus on Trixie''s experience, The Tenth Circle might have had the power of Alice Sebold''s The Lovely Bones or Rosellen Brown''s Before And After. Instead, the novel veers off into an increasingly implausible chain of events. Jason plunges from a bridge, but did he fall or was he pushed? Trixie is under suspicion; so is her father. Trixie runs away, to the same remote village in Alaska where her father grew up, and her desperate parents follow.
Two of Picoult''s books have been adapted for Lifetime Channel movies. In its latter pages, The Tenth Circle seems to have been written with one (or both) eyes on the TV screen. The book becomes mired in whimsical, fleeting, TV-ready moments -- the police detective''s potbellied pig; a description of Sorrow Soup; Trixie''s hiding in a truck loaded with cattle; and her melancholy pre-Christmas visit to Santa''s Village, en route to Alaska. And for a reader in a post-9/11 world, it defies belief that a 14-year-old girl could fly cross-country without benefit of a photo ID.
Illustrated pages (by artist Dustin Weaver) are interspersed throughout The Tenth Circle to show Daniel''s work on the graphic novel that gives the novel its name, a too-neat takeoff on Dante''s Circles of Hell. But the pictures seem intrusive, a blatant attempt to cash in on the current graphic novel craze. (And if that''s not enough, there''s also a secret message hidden in the illustrated pages.) Still, Picoult manages some touching scenes near the end, when Trixie is befriended by a Yup''ik boy her own age. One wishes Picoult had trusted her considerable gifts for understatement and wry humor, as when Zephyr and Trixie discuss the possibility of an afterlife:
" ''I wonder if it''s like it is here. If there are popular dead people and geeky dead people. You know.'' That sounded like high school, and the way Trixie figured it, that was more likely to be hell."
This sounds like the real thing, and not mere wistful longing for The Way Life Should Be.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hand
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Jodi Picoult (My Sister''s Keeper, ***1/2 July/Aug 2004) masterfully portrays the morally ambiguous situations that consume families and draw them together—or tear them apart. Her 13th novel, which deals with date rape, self-deception, and parental responsibility, is not for the timid. Despite its powerful themes, the novel generated mixed reviews. Critics disagreed about the value of Daniel''s illustrations (drawn by Dustin Weaver, with a secret message in them), though Daniel—who escaped a shady past in Alaska—becomes the hero he depicts in his art. Other critics thought some subplots improbable, written for the big screen. But if some parts don''t quite ring true, Picoult''s description of the teenage world is "unflinching, unjudgemental, utterly chilling" (Washington Post).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
There are no black and whites in Picoult''s latest novel, except for the drawings that graphic artist Daniel Stone inks. Stone, a former bad boy who grew up among the Yup''ik Eskimos in Alaska, now lives a sedate life in Bethel, Maine, with his college-professor wife, Laura, and his 14-year-old daughter, Trixie. But the night Trixie''s ex-boyfriend, Jason, rapes her at a party is the night Daniel''s carefully ordered life falls apart. Daniel is forced to acknowledge that he''s ignored the distance growing between him and his daughter and that his wife, a Dante scholar at a local college, is having an affair. After the rape, Trixie''s classmates turn on her, and even her best friend, Zephyr, sides with Jason, a school hockey star whose future seems bright. When Trixie claims she was drugged and the evidence backs her up, the tide turns against Jason, and another tragedy sends Trixie fleeing Maine for her father''s childhood home of Alaska, forcing Daniel to confront the demons he''d hoped he''d left in the past. Picoult''s sad, complex novel should appeal to the many readers who have enjoyed her previous works. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"Picoult skillfully twists and turns this story in so many ways, keeping readers wondering how things will turn out until nearly the last, satisfying page."
-- Orlando Sentinel
"This book will take your breath away....Grade A."
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Picoult spins fast-paced tales of family dysfunction, betrayal, and redemption....[Her] depiction of these rites of contemporary adolescence is exceptional: unÞinching, unjudgmental, utterly chilling."
-- The Washington Post
