Mercy

So i just finished this book my mom handed to me at the start of summer last year. Haha i know, summer was 3 months ago, but I was kinda busy during summer, in case you didn't know, so it took me ages to finish it. I just finished it last night.

It is by my favourite author Jodi Picoult. She's the one who wrote My Sister's Keeper. I cried from reading that book AND watching the movie. Yes I was very touched by the storyline.

So this book Mercy was also pretty moving. In a different way. To be brief, it was about a man who killed his cancer stricken wife after she asked him to, and he did it out of love. He then went to seek out his cousin, who was a Police Chief in a town because he didn't know what else to do. The Chief took him to jail and booked him for murder, but secretly hires one of the best lawyers to represent the man. So the entire book was about how the defense and the prosecution both fought along the lines of euthanasia and mercy killing and that sort of thing.

But along its side path, was a story which affected me a little more than the main story itself. Maybe it was because I could somewhat relate to the storyline. It was about the Police Chief who started an affair with a woman who worked for his wife. And while his wife was a doting, loyal woman, never over talking her husband, never standing out of his shadow, this honourable man went about sleeping with this other woman whenever his wife was out of town helping with the murder case, claiming to be completely in love with her. The character of his wife, grew with the plot, as she became more and more strong willed, and sure of herself, until in the end, her tall, strong husband found himself looking up to her.

Now what touched me the most, wasn't so much the cheating and the blatant lying of the man to his wife, but more about the concept of love. There is always someone who loved more in a relationship. Someone who gave more and took less. The Chief's wife definitely gave more. And the cousin who was on trial for murder, loved his wife to death, literally. Even in How I met Your Mother, there is always the Reacher and the Settler (Episode 13 Season 5).

And truth be told, sometime last year, in my darkest days apart from the boy, I felt like I was the Reacher and I was something he settled for. I felt like I loved more and took less. And that weighed me down like a ton of bricks. It's not true, I guess, but with the distance, and the fact that one of us was living in happening central while the other was in the land of absolute silence from 8pm forth, it kinda made it feel true.

Needless to say that was not a happy time. heh.

It's a good Picoult book, as expected. I loved it. I just popped over to the local Auckland City library this morning and got me another book. A Marian Keyes this time. Something a little less drama, and a little more Devil Wears Prada kind of fiction I think. It's called Last Chance Saloon. =)

Oh, and for clarity's sake, no, my boyfriend did not cheat on me. He's a keeper, this one. =)