Book Review: The Book of Two Ways

Here’s my book review for The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too. And check out today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult is a book that I will never forget. Not only is it one of the best love stories I have ever read, it is one of the more interesting philosophical novels I have read, which was also able to remind me of my own childhood dreams (When I was young, my first big dream was to become an archaeologist.). So, all in all, I appreciated this novel for a multitude of reasons that were both literal and personal.  

First and foremost, I appreciated this novel for its more philosophical components. As you read it, you will constantly be asking and answering hard questions surrounding ‘the business of dying’ and what it means to die and be alive, as well as questions regarding quantum immortality and multiverses and fate and love, and more. Yes, this novel is at its core a love story, but it considers so much more about life and love and death than the basics of two people who decide to be together or procreate. 

I also thought that Picoult’s storytelling was astounding in this novel. As a reader, you will become enamored with the way she weaves stories about quantum mechanics and ancient Egyptian mythology and culture with the main character’s own memories of living and thoughts of death, which include layers of her own mother’s Irish superstitions and her own stream of consciousness. Although this novel is told in the first person, you will still walk away from it with a vivid depiction of each character in the novel, as if they were each telling their own stories themselves too. And you will feel like you went where they went, experienced what they experienced, and felt what they felt. 

In the novel there are also vivid scenes in which the main character is excavating dig sites for a tomb and a coffin she posits will be the “microcosm of the universe” that allowed the story to come alive in every way, as if it were a live action movie. And this notion that death can reveal more about life than we realize becomes realized in the novel as, at the same time, the main character also unearths the literal book of two ways she had been searching for while reviving the relationship she had with a man she was in love with from her past. 

All in all, this novel is richly layered. You will learn a lot about history, science, the world, and yourself as you read it. I must confess, at first, I was not a fan of the ending… but the more I reflected on it, the more I appreciated it and how it ended up aligning with the book’s overall message and purpose. 

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good love story with substance that will teach them things about others, the world, and themselves. 

Here are some of the more notable passages from the book:

“I once read that every story is a love story. Love of a person, a country, a way of life. Which means, of course, that all tragedies are about losing what you love.”

“We all have stories we tell ourselves, until we believe them to be true.”

“Ancient Egyptians believed that the first and most necessary ingredient in the universe was chaos. It could sweep you away, but it was also the place from which all things start anew.”

“You know that the Greeks used to believe that people were made up of two heads and two bodies. But Zeus was afraid of how powerful that could be, so he split people in two. That way, instead of causing trouble for him, they spent the rest of their lives trying to find their other half.”

“The thing about death is that we're all terrified of it happening, and we're devastated when it does, and we go out of our way to pretend that neither of these things is true.”

“I know this much: morality is meant to be a clear line, but it’s not really. Things change. Shit happens. Who we are is about not what we do, but why we tell ourselves we do it.”

“There’s really no such thing as a right or wrong choice. We don’t make decisions. Our decisions make us.”

See more of my book reviews on Goodreads or subscribe to this newsletter below to receive more book reviews and posts about reading and writing in your inbox every day.

---

© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

---

Today’s Writing Prompt