Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

HANDLE WITH CARE

by Jodi Picoult

Commercial Fiction
Atria Books
www.JodiPicoult.com

5 Signed Copies will be given away on Friday, August 21, 2009



**Bonus Giveaway!

As a special tribute to the recent film adaptation of Jodi's novel, My Sister's Keeper, starring Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, we're also giving away TWO autographed bonus copies of the Movie Tie-In edition of the book!


About the Book

Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.

Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she's become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.

Interview with the Author!

Check out the exclusive interview we snagged with world renowned author, Jodi Picoult!

1) Your novels all deal with the question “what if?” Well, what if you had a time machine and could visit yourself when you were writing your very first novel. What advice about writing and publishing would you have to give yourself now fifteen books later?

Wow – great question! I think I would tell myself to relax – the publishing industry was and still is extremely difficult to break into. I was certain that I’d never have a readership – and like many other novice authors I was tempted to write the “sure sell”, or the easy beach read. Instead, I decided to write what I wanted and needed to write. It meant that my success took longer, but the fans who were attracted to my books were fans for life – and really spread my name by word of mouth.

2) How do you keep your characters so fresh and unique? It’s like you’ve known 100 completely different people over the course of your career! How do you make sure a character from one book accidentally doesn’t sneak into a psyche of another?

I think that this the hardest question for me since the characters arrive fully formed in my head, and start talking to me. It’s sort of like asking me, what if you met someone on the subway and he sounded just like your brother? That would be weird, because the odds are so slim…and likewise, these characters are so incredibly real to me that they just start talking…and I listen. And they all sound VERY different!

3) What was the biggest challenge in writing your latest book, HANDLE WITH CARE? And conversely, what about the book made it easier than some of the others?

Whenever you write a book that has a depressing premise (and let’s be honest, HWC isn’t a laugh-fest) you have to think really hard about how to make sure your reader doesn’t feel completely emotionally beaten. I tried to combat that by mixing up the narratives so that you got different points of view, and also by breaking up the text with Charlotte’s recipes. As for what made it easier – probably the fact that I had so many parents who gave me insight into their lives with an OI kid – it was very easy to put myself in Charlotte’s shoes after spending time with those families.

4) You have a reputation of always personally responding to your fan mail (without the help of an assistant!) and of course you keep pumping out the novels too. How do you manage to schedule all of that and have a life? Or have you mastered the art of cloning?

I don’t have a life, it’s that simple…just kidding. And I’m not smart enough to clone myself (but that would be handy indeed). I’m just REALLY bad at down time; and I manage my time very well. AND I have a BlackBerry.

5) Your success has been tremendous and also very inspiring. We all know you don’t have to write another book ever again (financially speaking), do you ever see yourself retiring?

I never say never – but I have no plans for that to take place anytime soon. More likely I’ll step off the treadmill of one-book-a-year – and maybe let myself take a long vacation!

About the Author:

JODI PICOULT is the author of sixteen novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Change of Heart and Nineteen Minutes. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children. Visit her website at: www.JodiPicoult.com

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