Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 2/26/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Picoult takes her writing talent for granted in "Picture Perfect." [Click to enlarge]

When authors that have complete control of their craft pass off a merely average book to their fans, it's always a tad disappointing. Such is the case with Jodi Picoult's "Picture Perfect" a novel that glides by on Picoult's syntax and structure rather than top-notch story telling.
"Picture Perfect," like most of Picoult's works, revolves around everyday people who are thrust into bizarre situations. The novel's action revolves around Cassie Barrett, a world-renowned anthropologist, and her movie-star husband, Alex Rivers.
Cassie awakens to find herself on an open grave with a case of amnesia that prevents her remembering how she ended up there. Little by little, her memory returns and she has to come to terms with the fact that her husband has been abusing her.
If this sounds like an unbelievably thin premise, it is. However, Picoult's expertise is typically taking weak sets of circumstances and making them astonishingly engrossing. And as an enthusiastic admirer of Picoult's other writings I was eager to see how she would pull off this strange situation, but she never quite got it up off the ground.
Part of the problem was that the characters in "Picture Perfect" are flat and hard to believe or sympathize with.
While it takes readers a while to begin to feel intimate with characters in any novel, here readers will be left waiting for these characters to make themselves accessible. Picoult puts Cassie in vulnerable positions, but she doesn't ground her enough to truly make readers sympathetic to her plight.
As an abused wife in such a bizarre situation, Cassie should be fairly easy to sympathize with. However, Picoult paints her as far too submissive, and her refusal to force her husband to take responsibility is frustrating. Picoult gives her characters clear choices and motives, but abandons them for no real reason at all.
Picoult also tries to make Alex seem sympathetic by pointing out extenuating circumstances in his back-story such as his own abusive childhood and anger issues.
This creates a few problems, making him wholly unlikable as well almost excusing his reckless behavior. Because he's given such a thorough back-story, he's not quite frightening enough to be painted as a monster and readers won't enjoy being forced to sympathize with such an abhorrent character.

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