Wish You Were Here
Jodi Picoult
336 pages
Allen & Unwin
Published November 30th, 2021
🦜🦜🦜
Wish You Were Here is a book I read a fair bit about when it was published back in 2021 – largely because of the controversy around the author choosing to publish a book about Covid-19 while the pandemic was ongoing. I didn’t get around to reading it then, and am glad of that now, because I think the five years that have passed since we all went into lockdown allow some perspective and to judge it on its own merits.
In March 2020, fine art auction Diana O’Toole is about to take a dream trip to the Galapagos with her trainee surgeon boyfriend Finn, who she’s sure is about to propose, when the sudden upswing in cases of the new coronavirus means his leave is cancelled. He persuades her to go anyway, figuring she’ll be safer, but when she arrives alone on the remote island of Isabela at a hotel that has closed with no luggage, no internet, speaking no Spanish and and with no way off the island, only the kindness of an old local woman stops her holiday from becoming a nightmare.
While I disagree with those who feel an author shouldn’t write about the pandemic because so many people died, I can understand how the subject matter could be triggering for those who suffered. What I can’t understand is all the 1-star reviews given purely because characters appear critical of the president at the time. I felt that Finn’s increasingly despairing emails describe the true horror of working in a hospital before vaccines, antivirals or even an understanding of how Covid is transmitted, when the government was dismissing it as “just a flu.”
I didn’t actually know what this was about and it certainly didn’t turn out as I expected. I’ve had mixed luck with Picoult over the years, and ended up liking but not loving this – partly because the twist is so contrived. I didn’t particularly like Diana as a character, and found the pace a bit slow, and the twist so contrived, although I get what she was trying to do. I did enjoy revisiting the Galapagos, where I spent a few days in 2002, and the vivid descriptions of the scenery and wildlife stopped it being too depressing. I’m swithering between 3 and 4 stars but ultimately am rounding down for the open ending.
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