Broken Things

Jodi Picoult has spent her career writing fiction that puts ordinary families inside extraordinary moral dilemmas. From My Sister’s Keeper to Small Great Things to Wish You Were Here, her novels tend to follow the same broad approach. Take a difficult contemporary issue, build a story around characters on multiple sides of it, and let the reader work through the questions alongside them. Picoult does extensive research for each book, often shadowing professionals or interviewing people with direct experience of whatever subject she is writing about, and that grounding tends to give her novels their weight.

Her style is plain and accessible, the kind of prose that gets out of the way of the story. She often uses multiple first person perspectives within a single book, switching between characters chapter by chapter, which lets the reader see the same events through very different eyes. Some readers find this device intimate, others find it convenient. Either way it has become her signature.

Readers coming to Picoult for the first time can usually pick up any of her standalones without needing to read the others. Her books work as book club selections too, since the moral questions she raises rarely have one right answer and tend to spark good discussions. Fans of authors like Anita Diamant, Liane Moriarty, and Kristin Hannah will find familiar territory in her work, even when the specific subject matter veers into the legal, medical, or scientific.