Product Description

Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone is in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father, Daniel's life -- a straight-A student; a pretty, popular freshman in high school; a girl who's always seen her father as a hero. That is, until her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence. Suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family -- and herself -- seems to be a lie. Could the boyfriend who once made Trixie wild with happiness have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a seemingly mild-mannered comic book artist with a secret tumultuous past he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back to protect his daughter.

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7674 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743496711
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
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

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
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.

Customer Reviews

I wanted to love this book and admire the author's willingness to take risks
There is so much I love about Jodi Picoult's writing and I always look forward to each new book of hers. I was intrigued that this one combined traditional writing with parts that were portrayed in comic book form (she got an actual professional comic book artist to do the drawings and they are nicely done.

However, I found the story to be very convuluted and the premise (was a young girl raped? Or not?) to be unbelievable in the way it played out, taking the whole thing to court. The case was far from clear cut and there were all sorts of potentially incriminating circumstances (at least, from a jury's point of view).

Picoult's greatest strength is her ability to glean insights about human behavior and the darkest, most hidden parts of people...and then bring them to light. In that regard, she doesn't disappoint this time around. I was intrigued by each character, from Daniel, a man who spent a great deal of his life in Alaska and had a dark, troubled past...to his wife, Laura, a woman who'd been drawn to the rebel spirit in Daniel and then grew disappointed when he became more conventional.

At the heart of the book is Trixie Stone, the 14 year old daughter of Daniel and Laura, a teen who may or may not have been raped by her ex-boyfriend. I believe Picoult skillfully portrayed all the emotional highs and lows of today's 14 year old girls, half women, half girls...and growing up far too fast. I felt for Trixie and parts of the book were almost too painful to read as her heartbreak and pain shone through so clearly.

Where the book failed me was in the plot which veered and teetered close to soap opera material. There were just too many "over the top" moments and that's when I started to lose interest. I found myself saying, "Oh, come on!" with each moment of high drama, from suicide attempts to screaming at a funeral. There were far more moments like that and I didn't find them believable. I couldn't help contrasting this with other of Picoult's books (Her Sister's Keeper, for instance), books which stayed much more true to form.

While I always finish Picoult's books (for, even at her worst, she is very, very good in fleshing out characters and gleaning insights about human behavior) I was hoping that she'd create a tale that seemed believable in both tone and plot.

This one did not. Still, she gets kudos for taking risks, for combining comic book form with straight narrative and for making comparisons to Dante's Inferno in much of the situations. This time, however, she just couldn't seem to pull all the various parts together...but she came very, very close.

I'll be looking forward to her next book, just as I have so many others of hers.

On a downward spiral
With each book she writes, Jodi Picoult comes down a level in terms of quality. Rather than narrowing the scope and developing it well, this novel is a pinball machine of ideas, people and issues that never come together. I kept holding out for an ending that would redeem the rest of the story but was disappointed till the final word.

Provocative, interesting plot, but flawed.
The plot of this page-turner is worthy of 5 stars.

Summary, no spoilers: Trixie, 14 years old, is despondent because her boyfriend Jason broke up with her. Thinking she can win him back, Trixie lies to her parents and goes to a party with her best friend, hoping she will see him there.

Picoult does a wonderful job of explaining the party life for teenagers today, and it is upsetting. We learn the concepts of "hooking up" and "friends with benefits." Woman's lib has taken a big step backwards.

Trixie drinks at the party, is involved in a game of strip poker, and engages in some sexual activity with one guy. Then she sees Jason.

The next thing we know is Trixie is accusing Jason of rape.

The conversations between the DA and the detective are terrific, as the DA explains the problems with even attempting to file rape charges under these circumstances.

The problem, and I cannot say more than this without giving way a spoiler, is that Picoult later has the authorities behave illogically, in order to proceed with the story.

The chapters involving Trixie were provocative and interesting. Picoult does an excellent job of making us feel empathy and sympathy for both Trixie and Jason. I was much less interested in reading about her parents, and found some of their story and actions less believable and reading more like filler.

Still, recommended, especially for book clubs. Boy is there a lot to talk about.