Songs of the Humpback Whale

by Jodi Picoult

Ebook, 2009

Rating

(436 ratings; 3.1)

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Hodder & Stoughton (2009), 354 pages

Description

This moving story of love and family is told through the eyes of five people: Jane Jones, her daughter Rebecca, and three very different men in their lives. After a watershed moment in their marriage, Jane leaves Oliver, her renowned marine biologist husband, and begins a journey across the country with Rebecca in search of understanding about her troubled past.

User reviews

LibraryThing member mmignano11

This book is not one of my favorites by Picoult. It is on the weak side as far as the writing and character development goes. The story line itself is fairly believable but I think Picoult fails to make her characters believable. For instance, Jane Jones, the main character is supposed to be the

character that everyone circulates around but I don't feel convinced of that. Her strength is commented on by her brother, but I don't see her as anything but fairly ordinary. Her problems with her father are pretty common and not extreme so the fact that they have sich an effect on her life with her husband is hard to believe. The part of the story where she is traveling with Rebecca is humorous but I feel that Rebecca is never fully developed. Her relationship with Hadley is a series of weak vignette that leaves me questioning what her attraction for him is. She seems like a young girl with appropriate behavior for her age, not more mature as Hadley claims. Their relationship seems forced to fit the story line. The ending, while sad, does not pull all the loose ends together, although it makes the reader think it does. I would not recommend this in book or audiobook form as it does not deliver.

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19 more

LibraryThing member carmarie

I love Jodi Picoult! And although this wasn't one of my favorite of hers, I still have to give it to her!

LibraryThing member DevourerOfBooks

I usually adore Jodi Picoult's work, but this and her other very early books I just cannot get into very well. While I prefer this book to Harvesting the Heart, it was still somewhat slow and the characters were not quite as well developed as in some of her later novels. Still, the book was

interesting, as her books always are.

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LibraryThing member shifrack00

Not her best. Plot works, but the one voice told backwards wasn't well integrated with the forwards rest of the story.

LibraryThing member scarvell

This book is not one of my favorite Jodi Picoult books. The book is written in the voices of five characters, which I don't mind, it makes the book different and interesting. What I didn't like was the daughter telling things backwards (events in the story told from the end to the beginning)

because you essentially knew what was going to happen at the end of the book before getting to it. I usually find the best part of a book is the ending and that's why I keep reading a book that isn't keeping my interests. I kept reading, hoping for a different ending, but it didn't happen. I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I still didn't find it as good as most of her other novels.

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LibraryThing member ladybug74

This is my least favorite of Jodi Picoult's books so far. All the talk by the husband about the humpback whales was kind of dry and boring to me. Not only is this story told from the point of view of 5 different characters, but it also switches back and forth in time so much that I was confused

part of the time. There is a heading to tell the reader who is speaking before each chapter and there are dates at the beginning when it switches around in time. I just didn't enjoy this one as well as her other books.

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LibraryThing member gutkko

I liked hearing the story from different perspectives. I did not like the way the story jumped through time. I’ve read other stories where this is done and I’ve liked them much better – the jumps made sense, they flowed well and progressed the story well. The jumps in this book did not. The

time shifts made the flow chaotic. While I wasn’t thrilled with the ‘growth’ of each character, everyone grows in their on way so I generally don’t get ruffled too much by it, these people seemed to just go in one big useless circle-. The fact that the parents didn’t even see that each time they had a fight and split the one who was most damaged was the daughter didn’t show much growth at all.

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LibraryThing member love2laf

Quite a confusing and difficult read to start with. It's a narrative from different perspectives, and in different time sequences. Well worth sticking with, though, it was a good story, and I'm glad I read it. Not exactly a cheerful, happy read, but intriguing family life story.

LibraryThing member Katymelrose

Meh. That's the best I can come up with. I didn't like characters - not a single one. The jumping around through time is not particularly effective because it removes a lot of the suspense that could have been offered and the story, frankly, isn't quite good enough to make it work.

There are some

flashes of the type of writer Picoult will become though. Particularly at the end. Of course, there is no suspense to go along with it.

Perhaps those people who enjoy reading the end of the book first will enjoy this more than I did.

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LibraryThing member jessicariddoch

"The first time Jane Jones tried to leave her husband, her daughter almost got killed. This time, she's going to do it right.
Jane escaped a childhood of abuse into the refuge of marrage, only to find history repeating itself. And when her husband's neglect extends to their daughter too, she knows

it must stop.
Taking Rebecca with her, Jane runs away, seeking the only place of safety she knows. But however far she runs, she cannot escape the question always on her mind: hoe can she save her daughter, when she could not save herself"

This book has all the things I like about Jodi's writing, the wonderful airiness and space. The way that the characters are almost haunted by their own thoughts. The confusion in each of the characters, the epifanies that they all have, again and again that builds up the next thoughts.
unfortunatly this is how all her books seem to run togetherl. My advise is that while each book is good to read. Read at least one other book between them so that the sameness does not get to you

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LibraryThing member arenstro22

Mom and daughter leave husband/father, take cross country trip to find themselves. find love and loss. Poor ending, doesn't match rest of the book.

LibraryThing member jbarr5

Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult
Jane has married Oliver who studies the ocean. Jane and Rebecca drive across America to her uncles in MA. There are letters waiting for them at various post offices along the way.
Songs are passed on down from male speaker to male speaker.
Find the abuse

sections hard to listen to. No need to slap anybody around.
Really liked the journey, all the places they are able to experience along the way, but am fearful he will find them before too long and really beat them up...
Rebecca is the teen daughter who's lifestyle leaves something think about.
Love the talk about the apple orchard and all the tips of information available. Correlation between the trip and the whales is interesting.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

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LibraryThing member LynnB

I didn't like this one very much. It is a story of a "fragile" marriage where the wife (Jane) and husband (Oliver) rarely connect at all, and when they do, the end up fighting. After a fight turns violent, Jane and her 15-year-old daughter (Rebecca) head across the country to visit Jane's brother

(Joley). Oliver goes in search of them and, along the way, learns some things about himself.

I didn't like the structure of the story. It is told in five voices, but Rebecca's is telling the story backwards. This is sometimes confusing, but also removes any sense of suspense. There are story lines, such as Joley's love for his sister, that aren't fully devleoped. And it's all melodramatic.

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LibraryThing member shannon.dolgos

Hidden secrets from the past revealed, Jane and her daughter Rebecca find themselves on a cross country emotional roller coaster finding love, heartache, and themselves.

LibraryThing member vickivaughan

Terrible book

LibraryThing member gogglemiss

Slow moving, episodic and ponderous.

LibraryThing member glade1

This was a departure for Jodi Picoult. Not a courtroom or headline in sight! But is was very good. A look at how we can love different people and how to make tough decisions. It was a little disconcerting having one of the five narrators going backwards while everyone else went forward but once I

got used to it, it added to the foreshadowing. It was good to see different points of view of the same events. I always enjoy Jodi Picoult and this was no exception.

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LibraryThing member LibraryCin

3.5 stars

Jane and Oliver have been married for 15(?) years, and they were together longer than that. Their daughter Rebecca’s 15th birthday is coming up soon. Oliver is a famous marine biologist who studies humpback whales, but his career success has come to the detriment of his home life. After

a big argument, Jane and Rebecca leave. Jane’s brother Joley (Jane and Joley have always been close), helps direct Jane from California to Massachusetts (where Joley is living and working) via letters along the way.

The first half was a bit more confusing with regard to timeline. Rebecca’s POV was told with each chapter going backward in time (but luckily, those were the chapters that told us a date). Until the middle of the book where other timelines met up, chapters were all moving forward chronologically, but they had started at different points in the story. Luckily, mid-way through, the timelines met up.

I didn’t find this as good as Picoult’s other books, but the second half did pick up for me – maybe because all timelines (except Rebecca’s) were now moving forward. But it might also have been that I liked reading the same thing happening from a different POV. Have to admit, though. I don’t think I really liked any of the characters. I suppose that could mean that everyone had good and bad points (like in real life), but I really didn’t like Sam and Hadley. I agreed with the ending – just barely as it almost didn’t go that way, and I was really afraid it wouldn’t (but there are probably readers who wanted it to end the way I didn’t!).

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LibraryThing member melondon

Extremely moving and honest.

LibraryThing member WellReadSoutherner

I tried very hard to read this book. The 2nd one of hers I tried to read. The 1st one was a 4 star. I got halfway through it but just couldn't finish it. It went back and forth in time and back and forth with people and was generally so confusing that I couldn't keep up. It is an older one.

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