BOOK REVIEW: FICTION
DESIGN: Sarah Anjum Bari
Jodi Picoult s
The Book of Two Ways (Ballantine Books, 2020) discusses with great candour the complexities of human choices, of love, regret, death, and other tumultuous complications that make up life. This book couldn t have arrived at a more fitting time, because in many ways it addresses the perpetual uncertainty that has plagued minds throughout the past year and still continues to do so.
The story begins with Dawn McDowell, our protagonist who is flying home to Boston when the aircraft she is on has to make a sudden and potentially dangerous landing. Dawn is a death doula by profession, which means she assists terminally ill patients with the process of dying. As the plane dives for the crash, she expects to meet her own death, and her life flashes before her eyes. She does not, however, see the face of her physicist husband, Brian, or their moments together; nor does she see their daughter Meret and her many stages of growing