I just finished reading a fiction novel
Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult. The book is centered around Nina Frost, a prosecutor who discovers that her 5 year old son, Nathaniel, has been sexually molested and is now mute. The trauma of the assault has rendered her son mute. He can’t tell her who, how and when the abuse happened. Her son has been violated in the most horrendous way possible, what can she do to further protect her son? Nina and her husband, Caleb, now have to start rebuilding their lives and focus on their son so he can reveal who has done what was done to him.
Perfect MatchI picked up the book as I was fascinated by how a person overcomes such trauma; because in all levels it is traumatic to everyone involved. How do you protect your child before anything like that happens to him/her? How do you deal with it if it does with all the measures you take to protect them? At 5, or younger, how is a child able to conceptualise what has happened to them and relate it to a grown up? What would you do as a parent that discovers that your son cannot talk after a traumatic experience?
Nina is a workaholic who often handles cases of abuse and has seen countless of parents suffer an injustice when the case finally gets tried and the perpetrators walk free or get a jail term that never amounts to the life the child is forced to live after the abuse. She understands and lives the law. But if she worked less and focused on her family, could she have stopped the abuse? Could she have known?
When someone is eventually caught for Nathaniel’s abuse, Nina takes the law into her hands and kills the perpetrator before the bail hearing. Now she faces murder charges as Nathaniel’s case is dropped since there is no perpetrator to try. To what lengths is a parent expected to protect his/her child? Is Nina wrong in killing the perpetrator before he is even tried? What would you have done in Nina’s case? Was Nina protecting her child or getting rid of a pedophile that might harm someone else’s child? Is what Nina did right or wrong?
I was glued to the book for a good 3 days; I loved the entire writing style – focused on everyone’s emotions and mannerism– sometimes tragically, graphically and shockingly on the perpetrator as he abused Nathaniel. Every character in the book has a story to tell, who they are, what they think of Nina and their feelings on her actions. I keep hoping Hollywood will not try to make the book into a movie and kill the entire story in the process. But I would give the book “Great Read” score therefore 3,5 Segololo’s thumbs up!
Segololo's worth a read rating: Great Read!
3.5 thumbs up