Wish You Were Here

Our Review

Wish You Were Here is Jodi Picoult at her best.

Diana O’Toole watched the car wreck that was her parent’s marriage and determined that her life would pan out differently. Now she is 29 and her life is following the plan she has set out for herself. She is an associate specialist at Sothebys and is about to land the account that is sure to guarantee her a promotion. She is due to go on the holiday of the lifetime with her boyfriend and she is pretty sure she will be coming back with an engagement ring.

Then the Covid-19 concerns begin to grow and her boyfriend Finn, a resident in a New York City hospital, tells her that she should go on the holiday without him.

Once she arrives in the Galapagos, she discovers the island is going into lockdown and she is stranded there without any knowledge of the language and nowhere to stay.

“In an effort to seem more chill than I naturally am, I have just stranded myself on an island.”

Being on the island causes Diana to reflect on the choices that have brought her to this state, and she begins to question if her plan is set in stone.

But is everything what it appears?

When I first read the blurb for Wish You Were Here I both loved and hated it. Why would I want to read a book set in the very pandemic we are living through? The more I thought about it though the more I realised that maybe it was exactly what I needed to read.

Diana’s dad died four years ago, and she has a poor relationship with her mother who now has dementia.

“I did not miss the irony of the fact that the parent I missed desperately was the one who was no longer in the world, while the parent I could take or leave was inextricably tied to me for the long haul.”

One of the many things that Picoult is adept at is being brutally honest and the quote below sums up the feelings of myself and a lot of my colleagues about the ‘clap for carers’ in the UK.

“I read that the Empire State Building will be lit up red and white this week for health care workers. We don’t give a fuck about the Empire State Building, or about people banging pots and pans about 7pm. Most of us won’t even see or hear it, because we’re in the hospital trying to save people who cannot be saved. What we want is for everyone to just wear a mask.”

Wish You Were Here has Picoult’s trademark twist. She takes a topic most of us feel we know inside out and then throws out a whole new aspect of it.

This book also has one of the best summaries I have read on how we all feel about lost time due to covid.

“These days I am thinking about loss. Because of this pandemic, everyone feels like they’ve been robbed of something, or – in the most extreme and permanent of cases – someone. A job, an engagement, a painting for auction. A graduation, a vacation, a freshman year. A grandmother, a sister, a lover. Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow – I realise that viscerally now – but that doesn’t keep us from feeling cheated when it’s yanked away.”

Wish You Were Here was an incredible book and I am so glad I chose to read it.

 

Our Final Rating...

Tue, 7th September 2021