excerpts from "my sister's keeper"

while i was holidaying in Perth last week, i had time on a few nights to take a read at this very nice book. i hope it's okay to include some excerpts here and it's not against copyright rules.

Excerpts from "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 2004)

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pg 149
‘He used to call me Jewel,’ I said, and that was enough to make me start crying.

A jewel’s just a rock put under enormous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.

But Campbell had looked. And then he’d left me, reminding me that whatever he’d seen wasn’t worth the time or effort.

Seven wiped up a spill I’d made without noticing. ‘Nobody ever wants what they’ve got,’ he said.

pg 151
‘The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we’re supposed to.’

‘What was wrong with her?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ Seven confessed. ‘She cleaned like a banshee; she never let me wash a dish; she listened to everything I had to say; she was a hurricane in bed. She was crazy about me, and believe it or not, I was the one for her. It was, like, ninety-eight percent perfect.’

‘What about the other two percent?’

‘You tell me.’ He started stacking the clean glasses on the far side of the bar. ‘Something was missing. I couldn’t tell you what it was, if you asked, but it was off. And if you think of a relationship as a living entity, I guess it’s one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it’s the heart, that’s a whole different ball of wax.’ He turned to me. ‘I didn’t cry when she got on the plane. She lived with me for four years, and when she walked away, I didn’t feel much of anything at all.’

‘Well, I had the other problem,’ I told him. ‘I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in.’

‘What happened then?’

‘What else,’ I said. ‘It broke.’

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