A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

Synopsis:

This is a fiction book about a shooting at a women’s health clinic in Mississippi, which is the only remaining women’s health clinic left in the state to provide abortions after the other ones were shut down. It is written in reverse chronological order. It has multiple viewpoints including Wren, a fifteen year old girl attempting to get birth control, Wren’s father, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, Joy, who has terminated her pregnancy and is struggling with guilt, Dr. Louie-Ward, the abortion provider and gynecologist, Izzy, a nurse at the clinic, and Janine, a pro-life protester, disguised as a patient.

Review:

I liked this book a lot and found it to be very thought provoking.

“It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.”

“The reason you hold on to someone too tightly isn’t always to protect them, sometimes it’s to protect yourself.”

“Sometimes you can’t tell how consuming love is until you can see its absence. Sometimes you can’t recognize love because its changed you, like a chimera, so slowly that you didn’t witness the transformation.”

“Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence, and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would too.”