Leaving Time (with Bonus Novella Larger Than Life)

Product Information

Serenity is a discredited psychic who Jenna enlists along the way, can she get her gift back long enough to get the answers Jenna needs? The irony for Jenna is elephants remember everything but she cannot remember much about Alice at all. 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. As a firm non-believer in the paranormal this bothered me at first but as the book progressed I found myself suspending my disbelief and accepting Serenity and her former powers.

We are first introduced to the three female narrators, each in her own voice: 13 year old Jenna; her mother Alice, who ten years ago checked herself out of a hospital never to be seen again; and the down-on-her-luck psychic, Serenity, who Jenna hires to help find Alice. Alice was a scientist who studied elephants in Botswana, Africa from there she went to New England Elephant Sanctuary.

There have been multiple reports of elephants helping to free rhino babies caught in a mud hole, although there is no evolutionary advantage to that behavior. Maybe I would have tried to memorize the smell of bug spray on my mother’s skin, or the way she absent-mindedly braided my hair, tying it off on the end with a stalk of green grass. I have loved Jodi Picoult's novels for a long time now, and am always eagerly awaiting the release of the next one. Then once I had it I was saving it because I hate when it's over and I have to wait for her next book.

They bring in characters that haven’t been mentioned throughout the story or they suddenly reveal clues that the reader wasn't privy to before, but not Jodi Picoult. The storyline is so beautiful and adding the plight of elephants with information to learn more about these wonderful creatures is very moving. I'm a huge fan of Jodi Picoult, I was lucky enough to receive a proof copy to review, and it was excellent! Does Serenity have real powers or is she just a swamp witch, a term she uses to describe fake psychics?If a matriarch dies, so does the collective knowledge of that family, and the society disintegrates. of elephants in North American zoos are overweight, 40% have foot or joint problems, and 80% have behavioral tics like head bobbing or swaying due to stress. I didn't necessarily love anyone other than the elephants but I still really enjoyed the heck out of Leaving Time. There are a couple of anomalies that bothered me a little, but as I can’t describe them without giving away some critical plot points I had better leave them alone. Regardless … a very good story; unexpected and unanticipated twists and turns; some intense emotional reactions!

The first hint that a population is being poached is a disparity between females and males – because poachers go for the biggest tusks. Together with the help from Serenity Jones who was a psychic and Virgil Stanhope a former detective, Jenna does all that she can to find the answers that she has desperately been trying to find in relation to her mother's disappearance.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. There is plenty of information about elephants and death that are not fables, but instead cold, hard science. Throughout the book there is a very clear message: elephants would be far, far better off if we humans kept a very great distance between us and them.

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. Maybe the whole time I would have been wishing there really was an elephant graveyard, except not just for elephants. 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. She didn't need to tell us that the elephant grieved in the same way human's do --- we FELT it loud and clear. A couple different storylines merging together told from multiple character perspectives (in true Picoult style!You can guess from the inclusion of the character Serenity that there is a paranormal dimension to this story. I have no idea if I would reread this book ever again in my life but I am happy that I finally found the time to read another book from Jodi Picoult. The accident resulted in another employee found trampled to death, and Alice sustained a head injury. The richness and confidence of her prose compels you to turn the pages, and before you know it you have been whisked away into the characters' worlds.