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Cloggie Downunder
interesting and thought-provoking The Book of Two Ways is the twenty-fourth adult novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Jodi Picoult. By some miraculous quirk of fate, Dawn Edelstein is one of a handful survivors of a plane crash. During the crash, her thoughts go, not to her family, but to Egyptologist and former lover, Wyatt Armstrong, last seen fifteen years earlier, and the dissertation she never completed. Instead of going home to her husband and daughter, Dawn flies to Cairo, heading for the dig where she believes Wyatt will be. Her sole intention is to complete her dissertation.
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By some miraculous quirk of fate, Dawn Edelstein is one of a handful survivors of a plane crash. During the crash, her thoughts go, not to her family, but to Egyptologist and former lover, Wyatt Armstrong, last seen fifteen years earlier, and the dissertation she never completed. Dawn returns to Boston, to her job as a death doula, to a marriage strained by a recent incident and to a teenaged daughter unsettled by self-image and hints of tension between her parents.
Dawn in Egypt recalls her childhood with her superstitious Irish mother, her three seasons in Egypt, and the thrill of discovery: a new tomb and a new lover. As she once again works a dig, her earlier time shared with Wyatt is uppermost in her mind: how their relationship, both professional and personal, began, developed into a fiery passion for work and each other, and then was cut short in a mercy dash back to Boston.
Dawn in Boston is reminded of her sudden return from Egypt to a dying mother, a hospice, guardianship of a teenaged brother, and the overwhelming responsibility settling on her shoulders. With her marriage now a little wobbly, she thinks back to meeting Brian Edelstein and their shared life. At the same time, Dawn attends a new client, a dying woman of her own age with some parallels to Dawn’s life.
As chapters alternate between Egypt and Boston, yielding certain pieces of information, it seems Picoult is taking the reader on two of many possible future life paths of a woman whose thoughts, feelings and emotions have been distilled by a near-death experience. Or, at least, that’s how it looks for most of the novel, until Picoult throws the reader for a loop.
This is a very cleverly constructed story, although mixed ratings indicate that not all readers appreciate the ride. Picoult has patently done a mountain of research. Some of the Egyptology is a little heavy going: the brain tends to skip over tongue-twister Egyptian names and the photographs are indistinct but hieroglyphs are clear; the stories, myths and legends are captivating, as are the Irish superstitions and the death customs. The role of the death doula is fascinating and if the quantum mechanics is quite involved, the concept of parallel universes and alternate potential futures is intriguing.
As usual, Picoult’s characters are larger than life, if not always entirely endearing. Dawn seems to have some double standards and readers may not find her apparently easy switch between lovers easy to forgive. As always, interesting and thought-provoking.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.
JHSiess
An Unusual but Compelling Story from Jodi Picoult The inspiration for The Book of Two Ways first struck more than a decade before author Jodi Picoult actually wrote the book. Her son was majoring in Egyptology at Yale University. She happened to walk by and see him working on a translation of The Book of Two Ways, a road map to the underworld that is more than 4,000 years old. She thought to herself, "Great name for a novel." She discovered that the text is about choices: “The deceased could take either a land route or a water route to get to the field of offerings, which is the ancient Egyptian version of heaven. No matter which path you took, you wound up where you were supposed to be.”
Picoult came up with the story of a middle-aged woman on a fateful flight. She is a death doula traveling alone while her husband, Brian, is at home in Boston. As the plane is headed for a crash landing, the woman is surprised to find that what flashes before her eyes in what she believes will be her final moments isn't the life she has built with her husband and child. Rather, she sees the life she originally planned that never came to fruition as an Egyptologist with a different man she left behind fifteen years earlier. “She has to decide: What do I do with this information?” She scuttled the idea when a planned trip to Egypt to research her subject matter had to be canceled.
But she resurrected it some six years later as she conversed with her son's thesis adviser, telling her she still wanted to write the book. She had always known that she "needed to write about -- the construct of time, and love, and life, and death." She took her up on her offer to travel to Egypt, and also set about learning about the work death doulas perform. Picoult is known for her meticulously-researched novels, and The Book of Two Ways is no exception. She immerses readers in Dawn's world, especially the archaeological digs she is part of in Egypt.
Relating the story through a first-person narrative from Dawn, her protagonist, readers learn that Dawn wanted to be an Egyptologist after studying Ancient Egypt in fourth grade and falling in love with the culture. She earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago and fifteen years ago she was a Yale graduate student working in Egypt on her third archaeological dig when she learned that her mother was dying from Stage 4 ovarian cancer. Her brother, Kieran, was only thirteen years old, and their father, a U.S. Army captain, died in a helicopter crash when their mother was carrying Kieran. Unlike their father, their mother did not die alone. Left with responsibility for Kieran, Dawn could not resume her studies at Yale, much less go back to Egypt. Instead, she got a job at the same hospice facility where her mother died, eventually earning a Masters in Social Work and becoming a hospice social worker. A decade later, she became a death doula and for the past five years has run her own business, providing the same services as midwives, but at the other end of the life spectrum. After thirteen years, Dawn believes that she knows a lot about death, but as Picoult's story opens, she is about to learn that she is wrong. About a lot of things.
While working at the hospice, Dawn met her husband, Brian, and they welcomed a daughter, Meret. Brian, a physics professor, has always been steady, thoughtful, capable, as Dawn describes him. But now their marriage is in trouble as a result of Brian's flirtation with his post-doctoral student, especially when he misses Meret's birthday party. For Dawn, it was a betrayal. She is also struggling to balance the needs of her business and parent Meret, a fourteen-year-old who, unlike her thin parents, struggles with a weight problem.
After Dawn survives a plane crash, she is overcome with emotion. Impulsively, she opts not to return home. Instead, after thinking about Wyatt Armstrong, with whom she was in a serious relationship when she had to abruptly leave Egypt to care for her mother, she heads to Egypt. Theirs was a classic love story: he was arrogant, self-centered, and immensely talented, and they competed as graduate students, but eventually fell in love. When she arrives, she finds that in the intervening fifteen years, Wyatt as ascended professionally and is now the Director of Egyptology at Yale. Obviously, Wyatt is stunned to see her because Dawn didn't just leave Egypt. She never explained why she was leaving and did not remain in contact with Wyatt. Still, when he asks why she has come back, she cannot bring herself to tell him that he is the reason she has abruptly returned. They resume both working side by side and their relationship, even though Dawn is married and Wyatt is engaged to be married to another woman.
The story is told via dual timelines. In an alternate reality, Dawn survives the plane crash and returns home to work on her marriage, and parent Meret. She takes on a new client, Win, whose son died at the age of sixteen as a result of a drug overdose. She embroils Dawn in her quest to locate her son's father, a painter with whom she had an affair. And Dawn's musings about the life she could have chosen are not without guilt.
The Book of Two Ways moves at a steady, but not fast pace which is appropriate for the subject matter. Picoult invites readers to join Dawn, a compellingly flawed character, on her contemplative journey of reflection about the path she did not choose and what might have happened if she had. Her desire for a second chance at being a Egyptologist, and to find out if her relationship with Wyatt could have worked out had she not left him without a word of explanation, is inspired when she is unexpectedly thrust into a crossroads in her life. Brian's work is in quantum mechanics -- the theory that parallel universes can exist and two versions of the same life be lived within them. Has Dawn been living an alternate life within a parallel universe? Is that what one of Picoult's narratives actually means?
It all makes sense when Picoult seamlessly merges the two narratives. Secrets are revealed that require each character to come to terms with the truth. Dawn is forced to make decisions about what she really wants and how her future will unfold after she has been given an opportunity to discover how a reunion with Wyatt will play out and faced the problems in her marriage head-on. Just like the Egyptians who believed that in the afterlife they would traverse one of the paths depicted in The Book of Two Ways to the Field of Offerings to enjoy an eternal feast.
In the hands of a less skilled writer, The Book of Two Ways could have become bogged down in sentimentality, but Picoult elevates the subject matter, deftly taking Dawn on a journey of self-discovery that feels neither contrived nor heavy-handed. Rather, it is a thoughtful exploration of a middle-aged woman's re-evaluation of her choices as she works her way through the complexities of her life in an effort to find happiness and fulfillment without hurting those she loves. Picoult always crafts thought-provoking stories that examine and meld several themes into a cohesive whole and The Book of Two Ways showcases her unique ability to do so in a believable, uncontrived, and emotionally resonant fashion. In true Picoult style, the story is related with compassion, sans judgment, and with the expectation that her readers will contemplate the questions she raises and find their own answers. In this book, Picoult takes that approach to its ultimate conclusion with an ambiguous ending that provides plenty of fodder for argument at book club meetings.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
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