Jodi Picoult, the New York Times bestselling author of Vanishing Acts, offers her most powerful chronicle yet of an American family with a story that probes the unbreakable bond between parent and child — and the dangerous repercussions of trying to play the hero.
Trixie Stone is fourteen years old and in love for the first time. She’s also the light of her father’s life — a straight-A … father’s life — a straight-A student; a freshman in high school who is pretty and popular; a girl who’s always looked up to Daniel Stone as a hero. Until, that is, her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence…and suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family — and herself — seems to be a lie.
For fifteen years, Daniel Stone has been an even-tempered, mild-mannered man: a stay-at-home dad to Trixie and a husband who has put his own career as a comic book artist behind that of his wife, Laura, who teaches Dante’s Inferno at a local college. But years ago, he was completely different: growing up as the only white boy in an Eskimo village, he was teased mercilessly for the color of his skin. He learned to fight back: stealing, drinking, robbing, and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself, channeling his rage onto the page and burying his past completely…until now. Could the young boy who once made Trixie’s face fill with light when he came to the door have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a history he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter.
The Tenth Circle looks at that delicate moment when a child learns that her parents don’t know all of the answers and when being a good parent means letting go of your child. It asks whether you can reinvent yourself in the course of a lifetime or if your mistakes are carried forever — if life is, as in any good comic book, a struggle to control good and evil, or if good and evil control you.
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While nursing one of my children at night. I was reading this book. Several nights in a row—I lacked sleep, could not put the book down.
Jodi Piccoult once again gives us a glimpse into the minds inner workings . The author writes Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons .But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you,nothing else really mattered . You became each other’s constant The writer illustrates how the past …
Hmmm. I feel a bit mixed about this one.
The positives for me were the link to Dante (one of my favorite authors) and how Jodi Picoult’s wonderful imagination created a Tenth Circle of Hell for the self-deceptive, for the people who lied to themselves, who pretended that everything was just fine when it was not, thereby avoiding asking themselves …
I just think Jodi Picoult is an awesome author and have all of her books that I have read!
Always a great read from Jodi Picoult! This had quite a twisting puzzle.
Such an engaging novel! Kept me reading from the first page, so engrossing. Highly recommend.
Jodi Picoult is a favorite author of mine. I have read all of her novels. This is my least favorite. I didn’t care for the adult cartoon parts of it. It does make one think.
I have read every one of this authors books never fails to be excellent reading
I love anything written by Jodi Picoult. This book is an eye opener and makes me hope that this isn’t typical teen behavior
I’ve never read Dante’s Inferno, so that might have affected my grasp on this story. The “cartoons” in between the chapters were too tiny to read in my paperback version, so I skipped over them, which probably detracted, too. The entire Alaska segment at the end of the story was surreal and out in left field as far as I was concerned. Not one of …
Loved it.
This was the 4th book by Picoult that I have read. For anybody that knows me or at least follows my reviews knows that I have a 3 book rule when I discover a new author. If I love book 1 but then hate book 2, then I give book 3 a shot to see how the author falls me with. I usually stay away from a writer if books #2-3 are pretty bad, but sometimes …