characters
OFF THE BOOKSHELF: Jodi Picoult’s ‘Change of Heart’
I’ve been choosing a lot of very soul-searching books lately for this blog, I promise I’ll move onto something lighter next time but to continue on this leitmotif is ‘Change of Heart’.To summarise, the story revolves around the lives of Claire and June Nealon, a daughter and mother struggling with the fact that young Claire needs a heart transplant to survive and that the remainder of their family were murdered before Claire was born by a man currently residing on death row – Shay Bourne. When he is transferred into his final stay in custody Shay has a ‘revelation’ of sorts and offers to donate his heart in recompense. As June considers this extraordinary offer from the murderer of most of her family, a number of other miraculous events happen around Shay Bourne before his sentence of death can be carried out, leading to a court case over whether he may be able to donate his heart that coincides with some in the community who believe Shay is actually performing messiah-like miracles.
Picoult’s novels always carry the timbre of heavy emotional charge and ‘Change of Heart’ is no exception. But as she focuses heavily on themes such as law, religion, murder, justice, families, love and death I guess it’s always going to be inevitable. This book also uses her much-loved ‘same story told from many different viewpoints’ technique but each voice is extremely unique and there is little overlap between the standpoints of each character. Reading the story through the eyes of all these different fictional people is a bit like gazing through a many-sided glass crystal: look at the same piece of sunlight through different sides of it and the colour changes remarkably. Same story, very different perspective. And the results are spectacularly disparate. It lends a powerful level of depth to the narrative, no matter what your personal opinion is on the subject at hand. It is these characters that carry the emotive themes so well and Picoult has carefully chosen a huge array of fictional lives to examine the story through. To list them: a very young mathematics major-turned priest haunted by past decisions, a homosexual death-row inmate with AIDs who murdered his love when he caught the man cheating, a level-headed and discontent female ACLU lawyer and of course, the mother, June Nealon. As standalone characters they’re each quite unconventional but there’s a layer of reliability within each person that pulls the story frighteningly close to your heart as you read. I would not in good conscience recommend this book to anyone who does not want to shed a little tear at the end of it or who has had any kind of trauma recently in their lives; it’s not cheery and can leave you quite blue by the end, as well as appreciative of all the good things you have going for you.
‘Change of Heart’ employs a lot of what I like to term ‘emotive legal,’ as there is a detailed foray through a court sequence but the focus is not on the evidence as such, just the emotion behind it. Apart from this level of tear-jerking, the book itself isn’t a difficult read but for sheer content alone I’d have to hazard that it is suited primarily to females (not to leave out the men but I am seriously generalising in this recommendation) above the young adult age bracket. I can’t honestly imagine anyone below sixteen ever finding this story engaging unless they are extremely seriously-minded or mature. It is a mature story, because the ‘bread and butter’ of it wants you to question what you believe. Do miracles exist? Can anyone ever atone for murder? What if everything you knew about the person you loved was in fact, false? What do you do after you’ve lost a child? How would you sit through the days leading to your death? Could you sentence someone to the death penalty?
“You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don’t want to say it out loud – for the really heinous crimes, we want to know there’s a really heinous punishment. Simple as that… I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? Who decides what crime is so awful that the only answer is death? And what if, God forbid, they get it wrong? What we’re left with is death, with the humanity removed from it.”
Tangled stories like ‘Change of Heart’ carry a few really well-executed (pardon the pun) plot twists which can change your whole view of the story at any given moment. Prepare to have the rug pulled out from underneath you a few times. And for goodness sake, bring the tissues and maybe something cuddly to hug. Bring your perceptions of religion and messiahs and miracles in the modern age. They’re about to be challenged. Bring your definition of justice and see if it changes substantially by the end of the novel. But hey, why not? Everyone needs a little bit of a challenge once in a while. This book can shake you right to the core and I do not say that lightly.
Thanks for reading this through, let me know if you think differently about the novel. Please pester me on Twitter to keep this going or if you have a book you’d highly recommend me to pull off the bookshelf. SophA
REVIEW: Lego Marvel Superheroes on PS3
I will state from the outset that I am unabashedly a huge fan of nearly all of the Lego games, mainly because there is something exceedingly satisfying in making one of your favourite characters tear the scenery into absolute shreds and being rewarded in showers of coloured bricks. The Harry Potter Lego games however weren’t nearly as good because you had to use your wand to do everything and I resorted to screaming at Harry, begging him to forget his wizarding ways and just kick the furniture apart with one of his plastic feet. I’m pleased to say that from this perspective Marvel Lego Superheroes fits the bill.
As far as characters go, you can play as all of your standard big-franchise names – what with the Avengers, Thor, Captain America, Ironman, X-Men and the Fantastic Four being in the spotlight of movie madness at the moment. Marvel’s popularity is certainly winning favourites with the cinema-goers and the Lego variation of these characters are simply too adorable for words. You get all of the associated famous villains and heroes for your block-decimating pleasure. There are also some minor Marvel faces that I thoroughly enjoyed, although I still have only a limited knowledge of who they are in the expansive Marvel-verse.
The game itself is bright, colourful, doesn’t take itself too seriously and only requires a low level of skill to get through the main story mode but there’s enough to do wandering around and replaying in free mode that it can be an exceedingly lengthy game to complete to 100%.
Another major plus is that the open world is the entirety of ‘comic book’ New York. I’m not going to lie and try to convince you that the inner nerd which resides in my heart did not skip for glee when I realised I could not only fly to the summit of Stark Tower but also the Empire State building. The mechanics of flying with different characters is extraordinarily good fun. And you can drive any vehicle you encounter along the way (my sister and I had a brief interlude of hijacking cars GTA style and running into other road users until their vehicles simply exploded, giggling like maniacs and driving off to complete every race through the streets we could find). There are random civilians that barrage you with their problems and often that just entails running off into the subway, beating up some foes and rescuing someone’s favourite shovel but the effort is worth the bonuses of accumulating enough gold bricks to unlock other areas and challenges. Deadpool has some fantastic comic-book-styled levels that are scattered all over the city as well, some of which involve fighting other villains and some of which mean setting up a party in Tony Stark’s pad for all the heroes. The means by which you find the entire staggering amount of characters are suitably comic-book and none of the vehicles are particularly difficult to unlock and buy but are fantastic to get around in.
But the game isn’t without issues. Firstly, it is primarily a two-player co-op game and while this is great if you have a friend who is considerate and kind and won’t murder you constantly, it can become irritating; however it is tedious to attempt it all on your own. There are additional problems too – the damn split-screen camera is extremely temperamental and just when you are standing completely still so your mate can set something on fire as the Human Torch it lurches away and you must attempt the section utterly blind. Unlike in the Batman games it is also harder to switch characters, so if you and your friend want to try another character in story mode one person has to drop out, you switch and then drop back in. The sheer amount of possibilities in the game in terms of characters and their abilities has its drawbacks; often the solution to getting into a secret area is absurdly simple, meanwhile you’re there jamming all the buttons on several characters trying to figure out who on earth you’re supposed to use to get past an obstacle. Here’s a hint if you get stuck in this situation – usually the way forward is via a dumbly placed lever. Once again those cameras work against you, hiding the obvious. And don’t get me started on the glitches. They’re primarily in story mode and if your poor character gets squished up against a wall say goodbye to your progress. Do it all over again. Expect to Hulk out multiple times in frustrated fury.
But it’s fun and gimmicky and it’s so Marvel – from the ridiculous puns, hilarious cut-scene interactions to the signature character fighting styles. The story is good and the cut scenes are well-done and the attention to detail is commendable. It’s a children’s game but there’s a little child in all of us, who re-watches all the Marvel films (expect for the original Spider-man movies, I cannot think of these abominations without an instantaneous surge of bile rising to the back of my throat) and digs out all the comics and dreams of being a superhero. Just for a bit. You can fly or hover or drive or ram through things with the Hulk, you can sail through the Bifrost, you can find Stan Lee on every level and that’s the way Marvel should be. Uncomplicated and glorious.
Anyway, that’s off my desk. Not sure if I’ll do these consistently – if you like my stuff send me a message on Twitter or something. Follow if you have even more faith in me. Whack a comment down below if you’re especially kind and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I watch the new Lego movie. It looks amazing.
soph manion 