The queen of the “what if” premise does it again with her brand new bestseller Change of Heart. This time the question Jodi Picoult is asking is what if you could save someone you love by granting your worst enemy’s dying wish?
Shay Bourne winds up on death row when he is convicted of murdering June Nealon’s husband and daughter. But Shay has an idea for finding redemption: donating his heart, when he’s executed, to June Nealon’s second daughter, Claire, who will die without it.
I’m sure you’ll agree that’s quite a conundrum for an angry widow facing the death of her ailing only child, and around such an agonising decision Change of Heart is expertly woven, rich with the many layers for which Jodi’s books are so well known and loved. Not only is June’s decision page-turningly thought-provoking, but the whole question of capital punishment comes under close scrutiny.
The US is the only so-called first-world country that still uses capital punishment despite the fact that there’s no evidence that it’s a deterrent against crime and it’s significantly more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life. “The best argument I’ve heard to explain the death penalty,” says Jodi Picoult on her website, “comes from another author, Scott Turow. He says it’s the adult equivalent of: ‘I don’t want you playing in my sandbox anymore.’ It’s society’s way of saying to a person that they will never fit in; will never be like the rest of us.”
The religious debate plays a substantial role in the book too, although I confess (ha ha!) I was less interested in that than in the other threads. I’ve possibly had all the religious debate I need at this stage. But I loved the legal side of the story and in particular the character of Maggie, a human rights lawyer with her own problems of the heart.
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