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: #2935 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

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

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

Disappointment
I love Jodi Picoult's writing and the moral dilemmas she incorporates into her books. Tenth Circle, however, was too over-the-top.

Jason, the 17-year-old purported rapist was for me the most sympathetic character. He is a high school athlete with scholarship potential who hooks up with Trixie, a young 14-year-old girl. After Jason breaks up with Trixie, she says she will do whatever it takes for them to stay together. They separately attend the same party where Trixie gets intoxicated, plays Strip Poker and observes her peers playing foolish sex games. Later the same evening, a weeping and disheaveled Trixie goes home and tells her father she was raped.

Jason is first accused of the rape and then later the more serious crime of putting a date-rape drug in Trixie's drink. The actual culprit is Trixie's friend Zephyr. Zephyr, however, can be excused because she actually got the drug from her boyfriend's brother. Zephyr thought she had recreational drugs which might get somebody high but not put them in danger of rape. The story is further convoluted because the boyfriend's brother was none other than a college kid having an affair with Trixie's mother. Trixie's parents continue to protect Trixie meanwhile committing their own heinous crimes on behalf of their self-mutilating, emotionally fragile daughter.

A female who says "No" to having sex is supposed to be respected for her choice. However, what about accountability when everything said and done leading up to an assault says, "Yes"?

The main message is children are participating in sex long before they are ready for the responsibility and maturity required of sexual partners. Meanwhile parents turn a blind eye as they deal with their own sad lives. Unfortunately, the message loses steam as we turn the pages and lose sympathy for the characters.

Not my favorite **SPOILER ALERT**
I was really excited about reading this novel and was slightly disappointed by it. I thought it was going to delve more into Trixie being a cutter and the problems being raped brought. It didn't. Picoult could have done so much with the plot but I felt like she didn't give it her all. As one review said, the plot deserved 5 stars but when it all came together it was only worthy of 3. I was really into it until the last few chapters (about the time Trixie ran away to Alaska).

I hate how Daniel forgave Laura for cheating on him so quickly and easily. I also really (REALLY) didn't like the scene with Willie and Trixie in the steam room. A 14 year getting it on with someone she just met? Was I supposed to be happy or aroused by the scene? I felt like a pedophile reading that part. I thought the whole Alaska tie in was lame (and the comic book aspect too) and the fact that Laura was the one that murdered Jason (too predictable). It would have been more interesting to go with Trixie accidentally murdering him or it turning out that he really did commit suicide. The whole "Oh, it was mom, end of story" thing didn't work for me. I also thought it was funny how fast the cops found them in Alaska. I know there's not a lot of people that live there and it was easy for them to trace the family to Anchorage, but come on now. They knew exactly where they were? Right down to the house Daniel hadn't been to in ages? The very day they get to Alaska? Perhaps I would have bought it if it took a few days for them to find the Stones but not as soon as they got there. It was almost like Picoult lost steam and wanted to end the story as quickly as she could.

I really did enjoy the story until the end. Throughout the whole novel I was thinking it was a 4 star kind of book but the end really ruined it for me so I have to give it 3. It's not going to stop me from reading any more of Picoult's stories. I enjoyed The Pact too much to let it ruin my interest in reading more by her. However, if I had read this story first it might have changed my opinion.

This book goes in circles, and leads nowhere
I had high hopes for 'The Tenth Circle', after being blown away by 'My Sister's Keeper'. Unfortunately, while that book had all the ingredients for great fiction-likeable, sympathetic characters, heavy, yet still believable drama, and a story that leaves a deep emotional impact on the reader-'The Tenth Circle' has almost none of those.
Most of the other critics have already pinpointed the book's biggest problem: lack of focus. Picoult never quite figures out what she wants this story to be about, and who the target audience should be. Part teenage romance, part crime drama, part comic book adventure, part character study, with an extensive, but largely uninteresting travel guide to Alaska thrown in.
The Stones never really captured my sympathy. Instead, I found Daniel and Laura to be self-absorbed, while Trixie, supposedly the 'wronged girl', never really amounted to anything. The connection with Daniel's 'mysterious past' in Alaska turned out to be a waste of time, and the abrupt scene shift to the 'frozen north' late in the story just reminds us what a waste of time the first two-thirds of the story is.
Much of the teenage characterization seemed to be ripped off from old 'Afterschool Specials' or those 'young adult' novels that used to be so popular, back when Picoult herself was a teenager. As much as Picoult tried to give Trixie some depth and maturity, she just came across as a whiny, sluttish brat who was just as self-centered as her parents and her friends. The whole book had the feel of a cheesy, cheaply-made TV-movie, populated with 'B'-list soap stars.
The main characters are interesting to start, but their limited appeal wears off quickly: Daniel as the stereotypical 'moody young artist', and Laura as the 'career-oriented yuppie' who gives in to her 'adventurous nature' and settles down with 'comic book boy'. The real-life comic book references are accurate(Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby and his 'krackle' special effects), but gratuitous, thrown in simply to establish Picoult's comic book 'cred' with a new audience of readers she doubtless wanted to bring in for this book. The comic-strip version of the story was certainly a more interesting take on the basic premise, but it, too, was ultimately a disappointment. The current 'trendy' style of comic art is a far cry from the stuff those of us who read comics prior to the mid-90s would remember. While Picoult does have some experience in comics (having written a few issues of 'Wonder Woman'),her treatment of the genre in this book seems half-hearted and gimmicky. I can see how it would turn off anyone who's not interested in comics, but even I got tired of it once the novelty wore off. The whole 'look for the hidden message' gimmick really seemed like pandering,both to the comic fans and those who would otherwise have avoided reading the cartoons.
On the other hand, I had never read Dante's 'Inferno', so I found the descriptions in the text helped make the comic a little easier to decipher. Each of the characters definitely had his/her own 'circle of hell' to get through, but I just found all of them too flawed and 'anti-heroic' to care about. Considering how poorly Picoult did at trying to integrate the 'Alaska' subplot with the rest of the story, she might as well have just left it out completely. Another example of an author doing a lot of research on language, customs, culture, etc., and doing a clumsy job of squeezing everything in to an already-overcrowded story.
'My Sister's Keeper' was one of the best books I ever read, yet I found the ending too painful to give it the high rating I had planned on giving it. In contrast, 'Circle' is just long and tiresome, draining every bit of interest and suspense out of a story that didn't generate very much of either in the first place. I ended up finishing the book just to finish it. I cared nothing for any of the Stones, and was simply left thinking they were a miserable bunch who deserved each other.
I can imagine it would be difficult for any author to top a book like 'Keeper'...but 'Circle' doesn't even come close.
One of the few mildly entertaining scenes involves Daniel and young Trixie discussing the best super power to have. If I could turn back time, much like Superman in his first movie, so that I'd never read this book...I'd really be tempted to try it!