REVIEW
An e-arc of the book has been provided by the publisher, Penguin Random House International, in exchange for an honest review.
“It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.”
A Spark of Light is a waterfall of trigger warnings. The story starts off with a clinic that is under hostage, there’re shootings, abortion, rape, domestic violence, infidelity, child neglect, and many others that’ll make you contemplate whether this book is worth the sacrifice for your mental health.
The story follows several people: a child who wants to partake on contraception; a father who feels like he’s losing touch with his child; a grandmother/ a mother who’s trying her best to become sufficient; a nurse who’s lost between the choice of keeping herself and letting her personality go; a doctor who despite the cruel circumstances holds true to his principles; a pro-life activist who isn’t with a ghost of herself; a girl who made a choice; and a hostage taker who is marred by anger.
“Sometimes you lied to protect people. Sometimes you lied to protect yourself.”
This book started off really strong. It levels you to be curious about the situations the characters are in and the reasons behind it. You begin to question the morality of the people within the building and what their stories are — not placing any sort of negative judgement towards them in the hopes that you’ll eventually know them better.
Jodi Picoult led us to an interesting choice of how the narrative is unraveled. The story began with the ending and ended with the beginning. I wouldn’t say that it is a bad choice; however, it did has its negative sides. Already knowing the ending means you’ll want something extremely distinct for the story’s beginning, and I don’t think the story had that. Moreover, a huge chunk of the book requires so much focus as it jumps from one person’s perspective to another without any distinct rhythm (or did I just not have that focus that I was telling about).
I believe that the story would have been better told if there were recognizable swaps between the story. As it was, it became nothing more but a jumble of storyline which, of course, you’ll eventually patch together. But at the moment of reading, it would be such a dissatisfying moment.
“When George Goddard was five years old, his mama tried to set his daddy on fire.”
There’re strong violence in this book. I was shocked by the amount of it when I started getting them thrown at my face. Yes, I did expect dreadful moments — because who wouldn’t when you’re reading a book with hostage taking — but I did not expect a book that had violence every other page. The amount of shouting, crying, and blood within this story drowned me.
“You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.”
Despite these things, the book isn’t without beautiful moments. I value the moments where the book shows us not only the dark parts and repercussions of the choices that we made but also the beauty of life and the chance of being given a choice. It’s true that some things that we do are bad, but we must also learn to understand the reasons behind the conditions that which caused this actions. It gives us room to become more loving and understanding instead of being hateful just because it’s easier.
The story and its message were strong. I would’ve easily given this a higher rating if it wasn’t for the dissatisfaction with the flow of the story and the placement of each story cuts — this very reason resulted in a lot of confusion and it [at the moment of reading] threw me off my momentum.
“Before Olive had retired from the university, the dean had handed down a protocol for a shooting.”
I just wanted to have this quote in here too because I’m at a loss. I am questioning the necessity of this “protocol for a shooting”. If, in the first place, better security and government regulations of armaments are available, there wouldn’t be any necessary protocols for such violent events. It begs to question the authority and their priorities. These are schools we are talking about here. I can’t even imagine the horror of going to school. What is to be a place where children are supposed to learn and engage with new people became a soil drenched in the blood of youth.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in knowing more about abortion — you’d want to find someone to relate to or you are just a curious soul trying to broaden your mind in the possibility of choice. As much as this book is eye-opening it is also something that you must read with extreme caution.
“It’s not the goodbye that hurts the most. It’s the hole you’re left with.”
