Plain Truth

Author - Jodi Picoult ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Washington Square Press was reviewed on 18-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:1416547819 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Plain Truth Reference Book. Classifications : General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books Contemporary Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Legal Thrillers Mystery & Thrillers Subjects Books Psychological & Suspense Thril . Click the following link to view the cover of Plain Truth.

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1) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press. I´ve read a few books by Jodi Picoult, some I loved, Nineteen Minutes, Perfect Match, and Salem Falls, some I didn´t, My Sister´s Keeper, and some just fall in between, Harvesting the Heart. But, when I heard about Plain Truth, I had a feeling that this would be an amazing book. I´m not too familiar with the Amish lifestyle, so I thought this would be a good book to open up my knowledge about them.

The book starts off with Katie Fisher, a young unwed Amish girl, giving birth to a baby in the middle of the night. When morning breaks, her father and his workers find a baby, dead in the haystacks. The police are called in and at first, they believe that the child died in birth, but pretty soon they realize that murder is afoot and their prime suspect is Katie.

Katie denies giving birth, despite the overwhelming evidence proving otherwise, and fights with the police as they take her in. Ellie Hathaway, a defence attorney who just won an acquittal and broke up with her boyfriend, runs off to her aunt´s house for a much needed break. When her aunt tells her about Katie, Ellie jumps in and defends Katie.

The court, respectful of Katie´s religion, allows Katie to stay on house arrest until the trial happens, only if Ellie agrees to stay there with her, leaving Ellie in a place that she doesn´t understand and doesn´t fit in. In order to work on her defence, she needs the help of Katie, who is unwilling to open up and share her dark secrets with a stranger, even if that stranger is her cousin.

I enjoyed reading about how the relationship between Ellie and Katie blossomed. I felt like they formed a strong sister-life bond and it was nice seeing Katie happy when talking with Ellie. However, when it came to the men in their life, I had a very different feeling.

With Katie, I couldn´t really sympathize with her at all, when it came to the men in her life. In the book, she cheated on her childhood sweetheart, Samuel, with a man from the `outside.´ She doesn´t really think of anything about it and continues seeing her outside boyfriend, when she visits her brother, and when she´s back home she continues her relationship with Samuel.

When Samuel finds out about the other relationship, he keeps his distance and tries to forget about Katie. He loves her, but he´s just angry and hurt about her betrayal. Katie, however, acts like she didn´t really do anything wrong and I felt like she didn´t really understand why he was hurt over what she did. The relationship was a sweet one though and I ended up really liking the character of Samuel. He´s a true gentleman.

With Ellie, I just felt that her problems with Coop were a little non-existent compared to the way she made it out to be. The two were going out before, and then when Coop wanted to advance their relationship, Ellie ran away. Ellie just broke up with her long time boyfriend after realizing that nothing would ever happen between them. When Ellie starts to hook up with Coop and realize her feelings are there and strong, yet she still tries to push him away. I knew they were going to get together, but I just felt that compared to the drama between the couples in Perfect Match and Salem Falls, for example, this wasn´t that big of an issue.

I know I shouldn´t be comparing between the two, but it just seems hard not to. With Perfect Match, the couple had to deal with the wife killing a man who she thought sexually molested her child, and in Salem Falls, the boyfriend is a registered sex offender and his girlfriend has issues with getting over her daughter death. Ellie´s problem was commitment issues...I just didn´t get it.

I mentioned before that I´ve read a few books by Jodi, so while I reading this I´ve pretty much realized she tends to use same formula for every book. The main one is a twist at the end. Despite my feelings with this, I did find that with each book the twist worked, even if I hated it. With this, it just felt weird and it didn´t make sense. I know there were subtle hints and clues throughout the novel, but the character´s motivations for doing this didn´t sit too well with me, especially, with the way said character was developed.

I know it sounds like I didn´t like the novel, but I actually did. Jodi did a lot of research about the Amish way of life and it showed. That and the relationship between Ellie and Katie are what saved this novel for me and made me finish it. Jodi is a strong writer and a good storyteller and she made the book flow nicely, I just wish that the overall execution of it was a little bit better.

3.5/5¤

2) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press. I´ve always been fascinated by the Amish. As a little girl, I would read stories about Amish children and their lives so when I began this novel I thought I had a decent understanding of why this situation would be so shocking to the Amish community if it were real. As it turns out, my reading prior to this story had only scraped the surface of what it means to live Plain - and, in turn, what it would mean if a Plain young woman was accused of smothering her illegitimate child.

Katie´s story was completely heart-wrenching for me. Picoult did a wonderful job of portraying all the physical and emotional reactions that a sheltered 18-year-old might have if thrown into this type of situation. Toss into the mix a strong-willed female lawyer who anyone would be lucky to have fighting on his or her side, a steamy psychiatrist and some very interesting plot twists and you´ve got a hit of astronomic proportions.¤

3) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press. After reading two other Jodi Picoult novels, I was pretty disappointed with this. It was simplistic and predictable, and felt as it had been written for 14 year-old readers. The main character is supposed to be a sharp and successful lawyer, and I was frustrated with how foolish and slow she could be at times. The emotional manipulation was so obvious that is was painful at other times. Yet the story was somewhat interesting, and I kept at it until the end. While I enjoyed it to some degree, I feel almost embarrassed to admit that. The fact is, Jodi Picoult is much better when writing about people and surroundings from her modern world. She can make believable stories and characters, but didn´t this time. The Amish world was interesting, but I feel more like someone told me about it rather than having lived in it, as I should do is a better novel. This barely earned three stars from me.¤

4) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press. This could have been an excellent novel, but it isn´t. The basic story is that of an Amish girl who gets pregnant out of wedlock and is charged with murdering her newborn son. The author should have focused on that, but she tries to draw parallels with the sex life of the lawyer who defends the Amish girl on a charge of neonaticide. Rather than parallels all we have are distractions. I realize that extraneous sex scenes are the way such books are done now, but it is still a mistake. I don´t object to sex scenes, per se; I object to authors trying to entertain readers with them when the sex scenes are for prurient purposes only.

I didn´t really care about the defense lawyer´s love affairs while she was in college, or her affairs while she is working on the defense of the girl. It added up to padding and diluted the central plot.

Somehow I wasn´t quite sold on the author´s knowledge of the Amish ways. On one hand the Amish reject modern ways, but in this book they accept several modern ways--without explanation. Orange juice, for a smaller example. Certainly the Amish can buy orange juice at the market, but it is not natural to their rural Pennsylvania environment, and such exceptions needed to be at least noted.

I was also taken aback by some of the errors of language. For example, there are no cement barn floors. If there were, they would be awfully dusty. Ditto for sidewalks, pillars, etc. The correct word is concrete. Cement is what binds the aggregate. Also, there are several cases where the subjunctive form of the verb is called for but does not appear. Exact words are the basic tools for any good writer, and when they are used in a sloppy manner, the result is marred, even if a reader is not quite sure why.

The characters are mostly okay, except for the "Englisch," who are often annoying. The atmosphere of the Amish farm feels right. But the biggest flaw is with the padded plot. Remove about 100 pages and this would be a much improved novel.¤

5) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press. LOVE Jodi´s books. This one is a great story about an amish family. Characters are enticing and story line is gripping....as always, you have to read to the last page to find the ending....read this!¤

6) Paperback Book Plain Truth by Washington Square Press.

The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core. But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial evidence suggests that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman believed to be the newborn´s mother, took the child´s life. When Ellie Hathaway, a disillusioned big-city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two cultures collide -- and for the first time in her high-profile career, Ellie faces a system of justice very different from her own. Delving deep inside the world of those who live "plain," Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. And as she unravels a tangled murder case, Ellie also looks deep within -- to confront her own fears and desires when a man from her past reenters her life.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 15-Nov-2008, 14165478199781416547815, 620-700-190-350-290-530-360-191-SSB-8

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