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As Jenna, Serenity and Virgil dug deeply into the past, trying to find information which had been missed by the police all those years ago, tantalising snippets began to emerge. But what did it mean? Were they any closer to finding out what had happened to Alice all those years ago? Could Jenna get any measure of peace by knowing the answers?
Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult | Waterstones Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult | Waterstones
The story is a deep exploration of the love of a mother and daughter and Picoult skillfully analogizes the intense love an elephant matriarch has for her calves to bring home the point. Alice and Maura, Metcalf’s favorite elephant at the sanctuary and the one elephant that seemed to form a very strong, almost personal bond with Alice, share a tenacious and unbreakable love for their daughters even when thousands of miles separate them from physical touch and companionship. They also share very deep and heartfelt secrets about love lost and found, about grief and memories. Told in two parts from the POVs of Jenna, Alice, Virgil and Serenity, the first part builds up to a confrontation with Jenna’s father, Thomas, whilst the second part begins to unravel the mystery surrounding Alice’s disappearance.
One of the major themes ofLeaving Timeis loss and how to cope with it. Discuss some of the ways the characters in this novel deal with their losses. Do you identify with any of these coping mechanisms more than others? How do you approach loss? Best-selling, reliably entertaining, and thought provoking Picoult’s newest multifaceted novel is redolent with elephant lore that explores the animals’ behavior when faced with death and grief, and combines a poignant tale of human loss with a perplexing crime story that delivers a powerhouse ending. With plenty of twists and a surprising ending, [Leaving Time] explores the grieving process and what happens when we cannot move on. Explorers who went in search of the graveyard would follow dying elephants for weeks, only to realize they’d been led in circles. Some of these voyagers disappeared completely. Some could not remember what they had seen, and not a single explorer who claimed to find the graveyard could ever locate it again.
Leaving Time Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary Leaving Time Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary
Jodi Picoult's Leaving Time features intertwining stories of past and present-day events related to an unsolved crime that separated a daughter from her mother. I adored the “past” events which focused primarily on the mother's post-doctoral study of elephant cognition. Learning about elephant behavior was my favorite part of the book, and I found it both heartbreaking and fascinating. The “present-day” events incorporated a mystery element investigated by an unlikely team of a discredited psychic, a washed up detective, and a thirteen year old. I don't have much knowledge about psychics or the ESP world in general, but I found this an interesting addition to the story. Virgil grapples with helping Jenna when he suspects discovering the truth might be more painful to her than never knowing. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew a truth that it might hurt someone to hear? What did you do? When we got to the zoo, I raced along the paths until I found myself standing in front of Morganetta the elephant.I wouldn’t characterize myself as a tree hugger but I do love the natural beauty of the great outdoors and have a passion for observing the flora and fauna of my environment. There’s some BIG fauna in this book! Jenna Metcalf was just three years old when she last saw Alice and has spent a decade longing to be reunited with mother, or at least finding out what happened to her. Jenna is now thirteen and began countless, fruitless Internet searches a year earlier for any clue of her mother’s whereabouts. Her daily routine includes a scan of NamUs.gov for any new missing person entries or updates. Beyond a single trace of evidence in an online psychological blog entry about animal grief in 2006, two years after Alice’s disappearance, the search is stone cold. The irony for Jenna is elephants remember everything but she cannot remember much about Alice at all. FOUR STARS! According to the official Goodreads rating system this means “really liked it!” I’m good with that, although I had my doubts and uncertainties going into this one. I allowed outside influences to shape some preconceived notions and expectations in my head about this book before I even flipped open the front cover.
Jodi Picoult · Leaving Time (2014) Jodi Picoult · Leaving Time (2014)
Jenna meets up with another character at the very end of the book. (pp. 394–395) Were you surprised to see who that was? Why or why not? The Sanctuary was where Jenna had been born, where her mother and father Thomas Metcalf worked together, caring for their beloved elephants, and learning of the close familial bond which elephant families share. Alice, Thomas and Jenna lived and worked with Gideon and his wife Grace, and Grace’s mother Nevvie, all devoted carers for many years. But one night everything changed – a tragedy that no-one had foreseen, and one which caused the culmination of events which led Jenna to enlist the help of strangers to find her mother.Sadly, for Jenna, she was just three years old when Alice disappeared without a trace. Now thirteen and living with her grandmother who never speaks about her daughter’s disappearance, all Jenna has are fractured memories through the eyes of her three year old self and her mother’s research journals. Because of all that remains unspoken, she hurts, like any child would, and desperately wants to get all the answers behind her mother’s abandonment. An intelligent young girl, she’s save up some money and begins to do her own amateur detective work, gathers clues along with other bits and pieces and, under the pretext of doing babysitting jobs, sets out to enlist the help of Serenity Jones and Virgil Stanhope, in the hopes that, together, they will be able to find Alice. The surprise twist at the end? While I did not see it coming, it was nothing new that hasn't been done? Jodi, have you seen certain movies from the late 90's/early 2000's? Yes, they did that already! Regardless … a very good story; unexpected and unanticipated twists and turns; some intense emotional reactions!
Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads
It seems a small, very angry and vocal Gooodreads mob of reviewers absolutely HATE this book and let their opinions be heard in no uncertain terms.Serenity Jones was a psychic; but her powers had been lost several years before after she famously gave the wrong information to grieving parents. Virgil Stanhope was the detective who originally went to the scene of the tragedy ten years previously and had since left the police force… LEAVING TIME may be [Picoult’s] finest work yet and is sure to produce much discussion after reading it. Still, this is a good book with engaging characters, worth reading. It's also a compelling treatise about elephants and an advocate for their humane treatment.
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