Book Review

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult is a stunning combination of a ghost story, love story, historical novel, and a paranormal ghost story. If character diversity has ever been insufficient, this book would definitely not fall into that category with characters alive and dead, and from the past and present. Family structure raises questions about integrity, respect, prejudice, memory, and medical ethics.
To open the book, Jodi Picoult grabs the reader’s interest in question by using contradiction and irony. The first character to come into play: Ross Wakeman. No matter how hard he tries he just can’t manage to succeed at death. The life he wanted ended when his fiancée was killed tragically in a car accident, and all he wants is to reunite with her. The perfect job for this? Becoming a ghost hunter. Try, and try again he does until he throws in the towel and moves back in with his sister and nephew in Comtosook Vermont.
Enter Spencer Pike. Pike owns land apparently on an Abenaki burial site, and is looking to sell it to a construction company, led by Rod van Vleet to build a mall on the site. If built, ghosts are threatened to stir things up. Who believes in ghosts? Certainly no one of Rod van Vleet status, however just to make sure Mr. van Vleet hires Ross to check the place out for the imaginary nuisances. Ross agrees, mostly because he has nothing better to do with his time, and begins the stakeouts with the help of his nocturnal nephew.
Much to his surprise, a movement in the woods draws his attention and what he finds is ever so real. Suddenly his late wife is not so important, and an equally suicidal woman comes into his life just like that. Lia is her name, and Ross falls in love. However there is one catch, Lia has a wife she is deathly afraid of. Anyone who is reading this can predict what will happen next, however in actuality the outcome is surprising.
All the changes in the town lead to paranoia of ghosts, however Ross claims to not have seen any ghosts. Where are these ghosts coming from? Rain is replaced with rose pedals, and strange dreams enter everyone’s minds, and the August ground is freezing bizarrely.
Next, the story sweeps into a 1920’s and ‘30’s time set. The main character: Cecilia Pike. This stage in the story explains a time in Vermont’s history where sterilization seemed to be the key to depopulate the insane or mixed race people. This was factual, and puts a very interesting twist in this fictional story. Most of the United States had sterilization beliefs amongst the powerful. What happens in this portion of the book is unbelievable, and unheard of in today’s time. Enter Meredith Oliver. As a person who studies genes, she predicts what kinds of diseases babies will have to make sure the parents actually want to have the baby. She has a daughter, Lucy, who sees ghosts. Some might call her crazy, and she drives her mother nuts, but in actuality she is seeing what everyone else is missing out on. Only her great grandmother, Ruby understands and supports the child’s incite. Perhaps the reason for so much support lays in the secrets of Ruby’s own self.
This twisting mind map is truly unlike any novel out there, mixing facts, fiction and time zones. It’s a ghost story with so many upsets you won’t be able to put it down.