The Tenth Cirlce

I just recently finished reading a pretty good book and I would like to share some of my thoughts about it with you.

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult is about a fourteen year old girl named Trixie Stone. She was crazy in love for the first time in her life with a junior named Jason Underhill, the school’s hockey star that everyone seemed to know and love. She had a life ahead of her, up until an extremely tragic event took place in her life. This single situation ruined her entire life, along with the life of the ones close to her. Everything seemed to spin out of control, with one thing happening right after the other, getting progressively worse. It was like the snowball effect. While Trixie was going through all of the crazy stuff in her life, she became extremely depressed and she started cutting herself. Through her problems, she  realized that what she used to believe about her family, friends, and even herself were (or seemed to be) lies. Trixie’s extremely dark period was intertwined with her father’s and mother’s problems. The reader meets Trixie’s mother Laura, a professor at a college who teaches Dante’s Inferno, whose own problems seem to be brought out in the mist of her daughter’s troubled times. They also meet her father Daniel, a stay-at-home father and comic book artist, who throughout the book learned that he really hadn’t changed all that much from what he was like as a young boy. His past was hidden from his family, and the troubles he and his family faced brought out the old Daniel. He was willing to do anything to protect his daughter, so he basically travels through hell and back, in his comic and in real life, all for his daughter. The ending will leave you very surprised...

Jodi Picoult wrote this book using the theme of self-deceit, meaning that it is way too easy to deceive yourself. This theme is part of the issue that the main character goes through. Trixie was ready and willing to believe that something was false even if it meant that her wishes came true, instead of believing the obvious truth just because she didn’t want to admit that was true. Another way to look at the theme would be that you never really know the real person behind the character. The literary element that the author uses to enhance the theme is characterization. Trixie’s character goes through a period of self-deceit. She went through a tragic incident, but she never let herself believe the truth behind what actually happened (this will make more sense when you read the book). The author gives the Trixie’s character’s certain traits and flaws that help create their personality. Behind her personality, there is the actual person, and she changes from what she used to be a whole lot during the book. She deceives herself, which really led to all her problems. Without her character the meaning of the story would not be as apparent because she is the person the whole story is about, and it is her actions that really set the theme of the novel. The characters are what help shape the story and create the theme that the author wants to present to the reader. This applied to Trixie’s parents in the book as well. There are certain occurrences when her parents both go through the same issue of self-deceit that their daughter did, and they definitely enhance the theme. All of these characters end up realizing the actual truth and they all deal with it in different ways. Some of the ways they do this are very unexpected, but it is all because of the real person the character is on the inside. In this book, the author actually hid a secret message in the comics between each chapter of what she thinks the theme of her book for the reader to find themselves. It is a famous quote, but don’t worry I won’t spoil it for anyone who wants to find it themselves!

Overall, I think that the book was pretty good. It was well written, it flowed for the most part, and the subject matter was interesting. I really enjoyed how descriptive the book was, I picture everything in my head. All of these things made the book an easy read and extremely hard to put down. A strength in the work was the way the author was able to portray the characters flaws and somehow still manage to make them likeable. She made the reader feel a connection towards the characters somehow or another. Even though I probably should not have felt bad for the characters in certain situations, I still did because they were like real, relatable people. Another strength was the way that the book was presented. The book was a comic book inside a book; it was really fun to link the story with the comic book. It was very unique, and the way the two worked together made the book even more enjoyable and fun to read. Also the fact that the story was told by her father, instead of having the story teller be Trixie who would have been the expected person mixed it up a bit. This made it different and not the typical set up for a book like this.

For weaknesses,  I think that the author dropped the ball a little bit when it came to certain parts of the story. For example, she should have let the reader know a little more about Laura and her situation outside the home, the detective’s story, as well as the character that Trixie meet later on in the book that I cannot tell you about with out given away some surprises. Their stories were not really ever finished, which I was disappointed with. Another weakness was that there was so much going on. It kind of seems like the author tried to throw to many things in the book and the ending never really tied up everything. Even though those things bothered me a little, I still think that the book was a pretty good read and I would recommend it to any mature person because it does involve sexual content. Pretty much any high school student and even adults would like the book. I feel like it would appeal to the female audience more than it would the male audience. It just does not seem like the type of book a male would enjoy, it does not have all the blood, guts, and glory that men seem to enjoy, but I am sure that there are several males that would like it and that there are some girls that probably would not like it. Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy dramas and mysteries because it involves both.