Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Author Jodi Picoult had a sermon she wanted to preach. She explains in the Author’s Note at the end of the book how she wanted to write a book about racism for two decades. In Small Great Things, she indulged her wish. Before she could preach her sermon though, she had to build a pulpit. Picoult spends the first half of her book building that pulpit from the frayed headlines of news stories over the past decade, many of which have been retracted or proved wrong. (Headlines can be unreliable.) But build it she does; laboriously, flawed, shaky and stretching the credulity of the reader. I could list the ridiculous events readers are expected to swallow, but there are too many. It would bore you, and me, to try. Read it and you can be entertained by highlighting the “ripped from the headlines” events. It’s hard to care about a story if the characters aren’t believable or sympathetic. Picoult falls short in the character development also. To support her impending sermon, she had to create characters that would serve her message, 2 dimensional almost describes them, maybe 1.5-D would be more accurate. Ruth, the black nurse, is the pure snow-white angel, Turk, the white supremacist, is the black evil devil. And so they stay until the end when Ruth is saved by a now-enlightened social justice warrior public defender trust baby, and Turk is redeemed by his love for his wife who he finds out is half black. (Oh! The irony!) Don’t worry, Turk’s half black wife is conveniently disposed of to allow him an uncomplicated redemption. The preaching really gets going in the trial, which starts after the pulpit is sufficiently built. We are expected to forget the shaky, inconsistent and defective foundation and now focus on the problem of racism, and white privilege. After all, Picoult tells us in the Author’s Note that her intended audience is the privileged white class that arrogantly claims not to see color. I’m still left to wonder why people with a smidge more melanin in the top layer of their skin still need to be rescued, saved, explained and all the other patronizing remedies privileged whites foist on their behalf. How condescending. When will melanin-challenged people allow abundant-melanin people to be something other than victims? When will abundant-melanin people refuse to be classified as victims. I guess as long as there is money to be made and power to be had while pushing that meme, we will need a victim class.