The Tenth Circle is the second novel of Picoult’s that I have read, the other being Keeping Faith which I read back in March. I remember thinking how engaging a book that had been and how Picoult had managed to draw you deep into the characters so that you somehow managed to see a part of yourself in each of them..
The Tenth Circle is nothing short of brilliantly captivating. It took me four days to read it – no mean feat since I work full time and did two 12-hour days this week. I just couldn’t put it down. Picoult’s writing is just so (and I don’t mean to sound snobbish here) intelligent and fantastically constructed and the way she gives her characters so much depth you can’t help but feel their pain or happiness as deeply as they do.
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The story follows the Stone family whose lives are torn apart one night when 14-year old Trixie is raped at a party by her ex-boyfriend and the subsequent effect on those around her. Her father Daniel has always been her main caretaker as he has been the ‘stay at home dad’, fitting his work of writing comics around her schedule. Picoult has cleverly managed to paint her father as some kind of superhero who will do anything it takes to protect his daughter from the world. This is further demonstrated by Picoult’s descriptions of Daniel’s ‘wild’ past which, cleverly juxtapositioned between his current ‘normal’ persona, serve to highlight the two sides that probably every person who loves someone else has – the side to love and nurture and the other to protect, no matter what price that amounts to. To this end, at the conclusion of each chapter is a short comic strip which illustrates Daniel’s quest to save his daughter, written along the lines of travelling through the nine levels of Hell as described in Dante’s Inferno – a epic poem on which his wife Laura is something of an authority.
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Jodi Picoult throws up so many questions during this book that on occasion it reads like Carrie Bradshaw’s narrative in Sex in the City. However, her questions and points are so relevant and thought-provoking that before you know it your mind is whirring away trying figure out the answer – sometimes to which, there isn’t one. Questions such as why you have to physically say “no” to sex for it to be considered rape when we never actually say “yes” either. Why isn’t the body language of saying no just as important as when the body language says yes? How dressing someone can be much more intimate than unravelling them. How you can be married to someone for so long and both know and not know them. How, when two people are changing so rapidly whilst they each fight off their demons, the two of them remain the only constant and can still recognise each other afterwards.
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There is no doubt that Picoult has done her research. The use of the Alaskan environment and its people serves to highlight that sometimes words are not needed and that volumes can be spoken within a silence, especially in a landscape where breath is instantly frozen on the air. I liked the way this was highlighted through the character of Willie near the end of the story and his relationship with Trixie. Sometimes you have to listen to silence before you can find it within yourself to speak the truth and how sometimes you don’t need to speak at all to say what needs to be said.
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I could go on forever about how good this book is but I don’t think I could ever do it justice. It is clever and sharp and brilliantly written. Picoult has the most amazing way of bringing you deep into the characters so that they become a part of you. The way she shows how difficult it is to be a parent, or a family, or someone who loves someone else, or anyone who has something to lose by turning a blind eye. How even superheroes have the flaws of humans, but at the same time this is what makes them superheroes in the first place. It's a lucky girl who ever had a dad like Daniel.
