Outside A Dog

I’ll admit to having a bit of a weakness for Jodi Picoult’s work. I hadn’t read anything by her until sometime last year, but purchased two of her books on a whim. It’s a good thing that I did buy two that day, because only a few chapters into the first book I was hooked, and I had finished the second by the end of the weekend. I’ve most recently devoured The Tenth Circle, about high school freshman Trixie, her comic book author father, Daniel, and her Dante scholar mom, Laura. Daniel is in the middle of one of those awkward parenting stages – the one where he’s watching the little girl he’s devoted the last fourteen years of his life to as she’s turning into a difficult, rebellious teenager and not really knowing how to deal with it all – when Trixie tells him that her ex-boyfriend has raped her at a friend’s house. And with that, everything changes. Stories are told and secrets are kept and exposed and everyone’s life is turned upside down, but at the heart of it all, Daniel does what any father would: whatever it takes to take care of Trixie.

Admittedly, this is only the fourth or fifth of Picoult’s books that I’ve read, but it very well may be my favorite. There always seem to be a couple of twists in her stories that manage to completely blindside me, and The Tenth Circle was no exception. I love the family dynamics that she is able to create and explore. I’m often shocked by the actions her teenage characters take, but I’ve also come to learn / realize that Picoult does extensive research before putting pen to paper. She also manages to leave little clues that you almost don’t even notice until the very end, where they hit you like a ton of bricks and make you say “Oh! That’s why…”