The Tenth Circle: A Novel

I know Jodi Picoult books all involve court and legal issues. Normally they start off strong, but then fizzle out on me. I have liked everything I had previously read, but never loved any. After starting this, I thought that was going to change, but I was wrong. So disappointing!

When this first started I did not think I was going to like it. The introduction was amazing, but then is started introducing the characters and I was thinking this would be something that I would probably not finish. Once the story begins, I was hooked though and I did not want to put this down. That changed towards the ending though. The characters end up leaving on a journey to Alaska and that is where this lost me. What just happened? And why? Everything that was amazing about the story just dropped off. It was like we started a whole new book. Where this started off as a 5 star read, I am thinking about even dropping this to a 2 star after this change in plot. It took away the whole point of this story and what happened to Trixie. I just do not get it! I was so frustrated as I thought I finally found a Jodi Picoult book that was finally going to have a great ending.

This does have triggers for rape, suicide, and cheating. It was up and down with twists and turns. My emotions were all over the place as you try to figure out what really happened to Trixie. However; there was no point in all of the Alaska storyline. There were so many things left unexplained.

Overall, this was another amazing start and horrible finished storyline! So sad!

Trixie Stone, a freshman in high school, gets her heart broken and her innocence stolen by the only boy she's ever really loved. A simple night filled with intoxication and games too grown up for a girl her age leads Trixie down the path of a horrifying examination followed by the painful shun of her peers. Worst of all, the undoable circumstances hold no promise of winning Jason back. And what transpires through the weeks of police investigations after Jason is accused of raping Trixie sends her ex-boyfriend away forever.

Daniel Stone, as a stay-at-home father, entertains the demons of his past through the outlet of creating comics. After hearing about the incident involving his daughter, he tries desperately to help Trixie heal. But the fracture of his own life with a crumbling marriage, caused by his wife's infidelity, only complicates things leaving Daniel to run on an instinct had proven to be dangerous in the past.

The author clearly did her homework for this piece. I found every character's journey both relatable and believable, and while the content was disturbing at times, I was not disappointed by the way things played out. I always love learning about a new landscape while I'm being entertained. This story was rich and though provoking, which is something Picoult always delivers.

The Tenth Circle is the first Jodi Picoult book I have read. I have been meaning to check out her book and I saw this on a list of books to read so I downloaded it. I'm glad I did as it was a really great read.

The Tenth Circle is not a light read by any means. It deals with a lot of serious things. It starts off when Trixie is raped one evening and goes on to how everyone deals with that and what happens later. It was hard to read at times because it would make me so angry. Angry not because of the writing or anything like that, but rather because it was too realistic. The way the rape was dealt with, the perpetrator, how everyone in town reacted was too real. How many times have I seen news stories about hometown sports stars and the people in town just cannot believe they would do something like this. That the girl must be making it up. Or that it doesn't matter because they are the hometown sports star and that somehow is more important. It is disgusting, but it happens. So the first half of the book made me angry at times because it was too true.

Daniel, Trixie's dad, has a particularly hard time with it. He has a rough past that he never talks about, but this brings some of that back. He is a comic book artist and I loved the pages of the comic book interspersed between the chapters. I love the Dante's Inferno references, since the wife teaches that, and it really added to the story for me. I loved seeing what he was working on. His wife has her own things going on at the time and what happens to Trixie really makes her stop and think about what she has done.

You also get to see what the perpetrator thinks about everything that is happening. That was probably the most interesting part. In this case it is kind of sad. It is hard to know exactly what happens when you only have the two people who were there.

Then about half way through there is another major event that changes everything. It leads the story into a different direction and I kept thinking wait! You didn't answer all the questions I had. Things were brought up, but never revealed in the first half and they seemed to just be hanging. The author does get back to them, they are not forgotten. It is always crazy how interconnected things are. It takes a lot for everyone to deal with what happened and learn to go on with their lives, but it happens. Trixie's dad is just so involved, he cares so much about her it was great to read. It was great that she has such an amazing support system in place. Really a great read.

This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland

Needless to say, I adore Jodi Picoult’s writing, but as much as I tried, enjoying this novel was more difficult than her other works. It might just be due the fact that the subject was too difficult and opened a can of worms in the subconscious of her readers. What I enjoyed most was listening to the narrator Carol Monda’s voice, which made the novel come alive.

In the story, as uncomfortable as it is, Picoult plays with the theme of betrayal in very many ways, in her typically unique style. In that, what she has written is awesome.

The secondary theme of people lying to each other and to their own selves is also quite strong. Dante’s Inferno is the metaphor to the story, and the deepest level of hell in it, Alaska, is what makes the fallen to rise from it and come to terms with their lives again.

In the setup of the story, the innocent but now emotionally scarred teen Trixie Stone, rejected by boyfriend Jason Underhill, tries to win him back. Through this effort, she is raped by Jason, who is the hockey star in Bethel High and the small community of Bethel, and because of Jason’s star status, few people believe Trixie’s claim. His father Daniel, the most likable character in the story, tears himself apart to help his daughter, but Daniel, a recognized artist who draws superhero-cartoons and has a troubled past, is also betrayed by his wife Laura; Laura is a college professor who teaches Dante’s Inferno. She, too, unhappy with herself, is distant to her husband and daughter, finding comfort in the arms of a student twenty years younger than her. The plot through its highs and lows--though a lot more lows than highs--weaves through revelations and its characters’ pain with several sharp twists and turns until its end.

As to character portrayal, I felt incredulity with the characters’ developmental arcs from time to time. The best part of that came when characters finally faced themselves.

Do I recommend this novel? I am not so sure. I can only say it has a strong but disturbing plot and dark, wounded characters. If anyone loves such drama, they should read it because the writing style, as usual, is impeccable.

The Tenth Circle is all about evil – or, to put it differently, it dramatises the clash between an individual’s wants and needs and those of others; and the limits to which ordinary people might go to save face, to hide from the truth, or to protect themselves or those they love. It uses the trope of a comic book artist who brings to life in a graphic novel a modern-day version of Dante’s trip to the nine circles of hell. Aspects of the artist’s life are reflected in each of the circles. These include what happens to his fourteen-year-old daughter after she tries to get back together with her ex-boyfriend at a friend’s party; the artist’s rocky relationship with his unhappy English-professor wife (who teaches Dante); and the secrets of his troubled childhood growing up as the only white boy in a Yup’ik village in Alaska.

The setting shifts from small-town Maine where everyone knows everyone else’s business, to an even smaller town in Alaska, a desolate but beautiful place which promises escape, tragedy or redemption. The Tenth Circle is a murder mystery, a coming-of-age story and a domestic drama. It’s also about metamorphosis, it brings myth to life and questions what it is that makes us human.

The story is gripping, the characters believable and sympathetic. Picoult’s prose is lucid and sometimes displays flashes of poetry than had me wishing I were reading an ebook so I could highlight lines for future reference. It’s the very best kind of popular fiction.

No wonder her books are New York Times best sellers.

This is the third Picoult novel I have listened to as I checkout audio-books for my long commute on a continuous basis, and I am really enjoying this author and others I have recently discovered. This book was not as good as the other two I recently listened to (Leaving Time and Nineteen Minutes). The characters were interesting and Picoult lays out a good foundation for an intriguing story, but as others have noticed, I found the plot to be flawed with some unbelievable aspects and a rather disappointing and unbelievable end. I would have definitely wrapped the story up differently and made the characters a bit less melodramatic. But overall I still enjoyed listening and was able to complete the book.

Trixie Stone thought she was a relatively normal teenage girl. She had two parents more wrapped up in their own lives and drama than concerned with what she was doing, and a boyfriend that she loved with all her heart. All that changes when her boyfriend, Jason breaks up with her and Trixie is devastated. She feels like she would do anything to get him back, including going to a party where she drinks and plays strip poker, despite feeling uncomfortable. When the nights events spin out of control and the result is a rape case, Trixie wishes she could go back in time to when her worst problem was a broken heart. Needing to pull together as a family also has a profound effect on graphic artist dad, Daniel, who has his own ghosts in the past to deal with, and mom, Laura who has lost who she is as a person.

As usual, Jodi Picoult tells a timely, gripping story. This one was a little unique, with Daniel Stone's graphic novel added in between chapters, for a greater glimpse into his life and motivations. Trixie was a very realistic teenage girl, facing complicated problems at a young age, which I think is typical of the way life has changed for high school girls in the last ten years. I enjoyed the setting of the novel, but felt it lost a bit when the scene changed to Alaska and some loose ends were left there at the end of the book. Overall though, this was an interesting read that leaves you thinking after the book about what is spoken versus not spoken and how a punishment should fit a crime.

Well, the premise of this book is my worst nightmare. A teenager girl gets raped.

But did she really?

Trixie is 14 and feels she is in love for the first time with Jason, the town's star hockey player. But then Jason breaks up with her and Trixie is heartbroken. She wants to get back at him so she and her friend decide to make him jealous. But things go terribly wrong and Trixie announces that she was raped by Jason.

A lot of the town turns against her, thinking she must be lying.

Is she lying?

Or did the unthinkable happen?

Her parents are beside themselves. Her Dad wants to kill Jason.

And then Jason ends up dead.

Jodi Picoult books always hold my interest. I love her writing style and her books always make me think. This book was a good one, even though it did horrify me a bit. It made me want to hug my children closer.

I had high hopes for 'The Tenth Circle', after being blown away by 'My Sister's Keeper'. Unfortunately, while that book had all the ingredients for great fiction-likeable, sympathetic characters, heavy, yet still believable drama, and a story that leaves a deep emotional impact on the reader-'The Tenth Circle' has almost none of those.
Most of the other critics have already pinpointed the book's biggest problem: lack of focus. Picoult never quite figures out what she wants this story to be about, and who the target audience should be. Part teenage romance, part crime drama, part comic book adventure, part character study, with an extensive, but largely uninteresting travel guide to Alaska thrown in.
The Stones never really captured my sympathy. Instead, I found Daniel and Laura to be self-absorbed, while Trixie, supposedly the 'wronged girl', never really amounted to anything. The connection with Daniel's 'mysterious past' in Alaska turned out to be a waste of time, and the abrupt scene shift to the 'frozen north' late in the story just reminds us what a waste of time the first two-thirds of the story is.
Much of the teenage characterization seemed to be ripped off from old 'Afterschool Specials' or those 'young adult' novels that used to be so popular, back when Picoult herself was a teenager. As much as Picoult tried to give Trixie some depth and maturity, she just came across as a whiny, sluttish brat who was just as self-centered as her parents and her friends. The whole book had the feel of a cheesy, cheaply-made TV-movie, populated with 'B'-list soap stars.
The main characters are interesting to start, but their limited appeal wears off quickly: Daniel as the stereotypical 'moody young artist', and Laura as the 'career-oriented yuppie' who gives in to her 'adventurous nature' and settles down with 'comic book boy'. The real-life comic book references are accurate(Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby and his 'krackle' special effects), but gratuitous, thrown in simply to establish Picoult's comic book 'cred' with a new audience of readers she doubtless wanted to bring in for this book. The comic-strip version of the story was certainly a more interesting take on the basic premise, but it, too, was ultimately a disappointment. The current 'trendy' style of comic art is a far cry from the stuff those of us who read comics prior to the mid-90s would remember. While Picoult does have some experience in comics (having written a few issues of 'Wonder Woman'),her treatment of the genre in this book seems half-hearted and gimmicky. I can see how it would turn off anyone who's not interested in comics, but even I got tired of it once the novelty wore off. The whole 'look for the hidden message' gimmick really seemed like pandering,both to the comic fans and those who would otherwise have avoided reading the cartoons.
On the other hand, I had never read Dante's 'Inferno', so I found the descriptions in the text helped make the comic a little easier to decipher. Each of the characters definitely had his/her own 'circle of hell' to get through, but I just found all of them too flawed and 'anti-heroic' to care about. Considering how poorly Picoult did at trying to integrate the 'Alaska' subplot with the rest of the story, she might as well have just left it out completely. Another example of an author doing a lot of research on language, customs, culture, etc., and doing a clumsy job of squeezing everything in to an already-overcrowded story.
'My Sister's Keeper' was one of the best books I ever read, yet I found the ending too painful to give it the high rating I had planned on giving it. In contrast, 'Circle' is just long and tiresome, draining every bit of interest and suspense out of a story that didn't generate very much of either in the first place. I ended up finishing the book just to finish it. I cared nothing for any of the Stones, and was simply left thinking they were a miserable bunch who deserved each other.
I can imagine it would be difficult for any author to top a book like 'Keeper'...but 'Circle' doesn't even come close.
One of the few mildly entertaining scenes involves Daniel and young Trixie discussing the best super power to have. If I could turn back time, much like Superman in his first movie, so that I'd never read this book...I'd really be tempted to try it!

I just finished reading The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult. This novel is supposed to be a metaphorical journey through Dante's inferno and which culminates in a battle in the ice depths of "hell," which, interestingly enough, is Alaska in this novel.

Trixie is the main character - she is a 14 year old junior high school student whose heart has just recently been broken when her older boyfriend, Jason, decides to break up with her. At home, her father Daniel turns a blind eye to the pain that Trixie is in, even though she has begun self-mutilating herself in the girls' room, as well as the affair that his wife is having with a younger man that is also her T.A. in the classes that she teaches at the local college. However, at a friend's party, Trixie allegedly gets raped and this forces the family to confront not only Trixie's emotional and physical fallout from the rape but also their own issues and the fallout from those issues.

There were some weaknesses in this novel - the story was really twisted and confusing in parts. It was hard to follow. Did a rape happen or not? Maybe that was part of Picoult's plan - to keep us guessing. The way that it played out was more unbelievable than anything - in the real world, a case like this may have been withdrawn completely or changed to something other than a rape case.

I loved seeing how the characters morphed and developed over the span of 400 pages. I also loved the comic inserts. I felt that they really helped me understand Daniel Stone and how he viewed himself and his role as Trixie's father.

By the time that the stroy line got to Alaska, I wsa hoping that the novel would end quite frankly. I felt like it was an over the top tale in parts and I was happy when it ended.

I was really excited about reading this novel and was slightly disappointed by it. I thought it was going to delve more into Trixie being a cutter and the problems being raped brought. It didn't. Picoult could have done so much with the plot but I felt like she didn't give it her all. As one review said, the plot deserved 5 stars but when it all came together it was only worthy of 3. I was really into it until the last few chapters (about the time Trixie ran away to Alaska).

I hate how Daniel forgave Laura for cheating on him so quickly and easily. I also really (REALLY) didn't like the scene with Willie and Trixie in the steam room. A 14 year old getting it on with someone she just met? Was I supposed to be happy or aroused by the scene? I felt like a pedophile reading that part. I thought the whole Alaska tie in was lame (and the comic book aspect too) and the fact that Laura was the one that murdered Jason (too predictable). It would have been more interesting to go with Trixie accidentally murdering him or it turning out that he really did commit suicide. The whole "Oh, it was mom, end of story" thing didn't work for me. I also thought it was funny how fast the cops found them in Alaska. I know there's not a lot of people that live there and it was easy for them to trace the family to Anchorage, but come on now. They knew exactly where they were? Right down to the house Daniel hadn't been to in ages? The very day they get to Alaska? Perhaps I would have bought it if it took a few days for them to find the Stones but not as soon as they got there. It was almost like Picoult lost steam and wanted to end the story as quickly as she could.

I really did enjoy the story until the end. Throughout the whole novel I was thinking it was a 4 star kind of book but the end really ruined it for me so I have to give it 3. It's not going to stop me from reading any more of Picoult's stories. I enjoyed The Pact too much to let it ruin my interest in reading more by her. However, if I had read this story first it might have changed my opinion.

THE TENTH CIRCLE by Jodi Picoult
July 22, 2008

the store Rating: 3/5 stars

THE TENTH CIRCLE has two main stories embedded in one. The main story is the one that follows the daughter, and the prologue involves Trixie getting lost as a toddler and her father freaking out, worried that she may have been kidnapped. This scene misled me to think the story would have a kidnapping scenario, but it didn't. It is hinted that this one experience maimed Trixie for life, and hurt her psychologically. From the story and the choices she made, yes, she had a lot of psychological problems, but they were never dealt with at any point - there are scenes where she gets into self mutilation. But at the same time, after reading the entire book, I feel that this intro with Trixie getting lost did not really connect with the rest of the book. I totally forgot it even happened, until I started writing this review.

Trixie, in the main body of the book, is a teenager who is having peer pressure issues. She just lost a boyfriend who was considered THE guy to be with, and because she had been dating him, she had been included with the "in group". Without him, she was considered one of the geeks, the outcasts. Upon the breakup, Trixie falls apart and is desperate. She cannot live without Jason. It's at a party that Trixie and her best friend decide that Trixie needs to make Jason jealous, and in a drunken state Trixie flirts and makes out with various guys at the party, and eventually ends up at a strip poker game with just four of them. It is just she and Jason, and his best friend Moss and her best friend Zephyr. It doesn't end on a good note. It's this event after the poker game that changes everything. This one single act changes the lives of many people, and is so devastating that it ends in tragedy.

The other story is that of Daniel and Laura Stone (Trixie's parents) marriage, their histories, and Laura's affair. In the midst of it all, Daniel is writing a comic strip based on his life and mirrors his need to protect his daughter. Daniel has a secret past, one that his family does not know. He's run away from it, a past that started with his childhood in Alaska. He's a changed person from what he was back then, but Trixie's problems with her boyfriend Jason will bring it all back.

While I'm giving this book a 3 star rating, it was not one of my favorites by Jodi Picoult. While I felt it was rather unique to intersperse the comics with each chapter, I felt they were distracting and they broke the mood of the main story. I get it that the father was a comic book artist, and I also got that the story in the book paralleled the comic book hero's story, but I still feel somewhat that this was unnecessary. On the other hand, it did make this a unique reading experience, and it's a book I won't forget. I'll always remember THE TENTH CIRCLE as the book with the super hero comic strip.

In terms of the story line - I am not sure what to think. I didn't like any of the characters, meaning I had no sympathy with any one of them: not the mom, who was having a secret life on the side, not the daughter who was living a life that her parents didn't know about, not the father who had a checkered past. Now, I never give a bad rating just because I don't like the characters. I attribute the creation of unlikable characters to good writing and realistic characters that I just happen to not care for. If I met them on the street, they wouldn't be my friends. I can't relate to them or the choices they made. I am not condemning any of the characters either, for what they did. But something about them I just didn't connect with.

One of the problems I had with the story line was the last section of the book that took us to Alaska. Yes, I get that Daniel was from Alaska, but I found that moving the story line to Alaska turned the book into am almost epic story, which I felt was unnecessary. The book was already on a grand scale close to being a soap opera, and I felt that this change in location broke the mood of the story. I would have liked it better if things were resolved in a courtroom, but as readers will find out, this doesn't happen for reasons I won't disclose.

3 stars isn't a bad rating, but I've always given her books a 4. THE TENTH CIRCLE is definitely not one of my favorite Jodi Picoult stories, but at the same time, it still kept my interest and it didn't' take me long to finish it.

I read this on holiday, straight after reading Nineteen Minutes, which I really enjoyed. This was about teen rape, not a subject I can identify with, but a subject that I thought the author could handle in a good way.

I was sadly disappointed. The only good point about the book was the fact there was no court case, and the Hell/Snow parrallels, imagery that I've never picked up on before but the bad points far outweigh the good. For starters, the comic "strips" included throughout the book. I've never been one for reading comics, I could have got my boyfriend to make sense of it, but I'm sure I wouldn't have been the best girlfriend in the world if I'd done that. It was just pointless, and I skipped it all, as it seemed to bear little relation to the novel - only to discover at the end that there were "clues" hidden throughout the comic strips. Why?! I wasn't about to go back and find these clues once I've finished the book.

There are other flaws to the book, particularly the ending. As I have a feeling I've had the same problem with other novels, the ending is far too abrupt for my liking. And I saw who the murderer was within a couple of pages of the actual murder happening. I desperately hoped that I was wrong, and seeing things, but with such clear signposting (hello?! It's supposed to be a mystery, yes?), it's glaringly obvious. The character of Daniel has apparently a shady past, which is hinted at throughout the book, and the reader thinks this will get explained at the end - but it doesn't. An entire subplot dropped? And the implication that rape victims are all better once they find a new boyfriend? I don't think so.

Going back to the underlying theme of Hell, what it means to one person, and what it means to another, runs very well throughout the book, the imagery stretching out throughout the simplest description, and I quite enjoyed this in the book. Not something Jodi does very often.

I wouldn't suggest recommend this for a first time reader of Jodi's work - I would certainly start of with one of her earlier books, or certainly Nineteen Minutes. Not this. It fails to live up to my high expectations after Nineteen Minutes.

Jodi Picoult did a fine job researching Dante, Inuit culture, comic books, and crime scene investigation. She started with an interesting plot: Two dysfunctional parents and an empty, dysfunctional daughter. Mom is having an affair; Dad is making peace with his screwed up past within the pages of his graphic novel. (For the adults who are too grown up for comic books!) Beatrice "Trixie" Stone can't recover from her break up with upperclassman hockey hotshot Jason Underhill.

The party, which is the catalyst of Trixie's life changes, is disturbing. Best buddy Zephyr convinces Trixie that by providing fellatio to the male partiers, she will make Jason jealous, and then Jason will come back to her. (This is explained in detail as a Rainbow, you can also read about teens having sex in conga line formations and guessing what lucky guy is getting sucked off. Lovely, no?) I was appalled to read what Trixie was going to do....

Trixie gets raped. I predicted all of the things that happened to her as a result of this "mess". (I had a hard time believing she was raped.) Yes, we've got it all folks- self-multilation, suicide attempts, degrading comments....

And, yes, we're still figuring out what's wrong with Mom and Dad. Both feel guilty for not having known Trixie was heading down a bad path. Mom regrets her extramaritial affair; Dad is still trying to make ammends with his past. Unfortunately, we never know what happens with Mom and her ex-lover. The last we see of the ex-lover is his attempt to tell Mom about a drug deal gone sour. We're left to wonder if Jason Underhill drugged Trixie before he raped her.

Dad is so stressed out that he can't complete the next issue of his comic book. Will he ever complete it? Probably not, because he's too busy snow mobiling through the Alaskan Tundra as his daughter is bathed by a random boy she meets on her own Alaskan trek. (More to this...)

Trixie runs away a few days after Jason Underhill commits suicide. She hitches from her hometown in southern Maine to New Hampshire, then over to Vermont. Zephyr stole money in order to finance Trixie's trip. (What a great example for the kiddies!!!) Then, Trixie steals a credit card and license from a teen mother. Sooo, Trixie flies all the way to the Alaskan Tundra, poses as a "Jesuit Volunteer", is chauffered by Willie, an Eskimo boy, gets naked with Willie (to keep warm, but Picoult reminds us that he's got a "boner") takes a bath with Willie, then Dad comes to rescue her. Dad takes her back to a larger Alaskan town where Trixie is arrested for Jason's murder. Trixie is in juvenile hall; Mom is in the holding cell. Trixie makes a confession to dad, which includes "stuff" about her mother's ex-lover. Mom also confesses a lot more to Dad.

TOO MUCH GOING ON!!! I skipped over the parts of Trixie and Willie's "love affair" on the tundra because the whole thing was sooo farfetched!!! I also didn't like reading about young teens engaging in sex, drugs, and alcohol. Trixie, Zephyr, and all the other kids are not good role models. Trixie's parents and other parents also can't parent. Is Picoult trying to tell us that we're all dysfunctional?

INCONSISTENCIES: Dropped plots!!! And, somewhere along the way, we are told that Trixie played soccer that fall. But it was mentioned toward the end. Also, in the very beginning, which "fastforwards" to Trixie and her dad on the Tundra, Trixie thinks of Moss and Zephyr as her friends. Moss was a complete jerk to her- they were not friends by the time Trixie got to the tundra!!!

This is a good book if you want to read about icy cold Maine winters, Inuit culture, or the symbolism of Dante's inferno. If you're a graphic novel aficionado, you'll appreciate the comic book chapter interspersed between chapters. (I skipped them!) Also, if you're looking for a big messy, over-thetop-plot, you'll at least tolerate this book.

The first time I ever heard of novelist Jodi Picoult was the second I glimpsed the intriguing title of this novel. The fact that this novel was called "The Tenth Circle" got me to pick it up. The power of the opening pages convinced me to purchase it, and after that, as I read it in one night, I marveled at the skill with which Jodi Picoult created the characters who populated The Tenth Circle. This is a disturbing and memorable story of a family in deep crisis. Past a point, everything in The Tenth Circle is confronted head-on and the deliberate sparing of tact might surprise some readers used to a more circumspect tale.

In this book, there is the father, Daniel, who has achieved little short of a reinvention of who he is, going from the racism and cruelty he faced growing up as the lone Caucasian boy in an Alaskan town populated by Inuits to an attentive, maybe overly-protective dad. Daniel, a man for whom the world is a series of images rather than verbal concepts, moved to Maine, became a successful graphic novelist, and wed a woman, Laura, a professor who specializes in the medieval masterpieces of Dante Alighieri. The couple have a teenaged daughter, Trixie, and the falsely sedate life they've had for fourteen years rapidly comes apart in the aftermath of Trixie's allegation of rape, made against a former boyfriend. The effect this accusation has on Daniel is understandably profound. Not only is he consumed by rage, as he has not been in the years since his escape from Alaska to Maine, but Trixie's actions after this revelation spur the family into the dark waters of ongoing crises, and reveal many secrets that had lain buried. Laura has been unfaithful to her husband. Daniel is not the mild-mannered supportive father he had seemed for the years of his daughter's life but a man burning with anger, frightened, determined to overcome, but privately enduring---along with his family---his own Hell. When Trixie forces Daniel to return to Alaska, the past and present collide in some of the more effective prose that's come from an American novel in years. Picoult might have gone a little deep in her drawing a parallel between the events in the modern world and those in Dante's Inferno, but the lines she sketches are unmistakable and show the universality of those themes which confront humanity over and over and always will. There is one scene near the novel's denouement that made me pause, consider what I thought was my understanding of the people about whom I'd been reading, and then go back and re-read not just it but a number of previous scenes, all with a mind to challenging what I thought I knew. That is a rare event for me.

I won't give away how the author ends this book and whether the liberation from Hell is achieved and at what price it comes, but I will say that for those who lack a background in Dante's Inferno, there is still a fine novel here for you, so don't let that stop you from reading this. It's also---men---not a "chick book" and I assure you some of what goes on is every bit as disturbing as most of us would ever want a book to be. It asks many questions (many of which are easy to miss) and leaves answers up to us. Is love truly about release? To what extent are those we love possessions? And is it possible to escape the past which simultaneously defines us and enslaves us? Are all of our journeys really trips toward a point, or away from one? There is a lot more going on in The Tenth Circle than any review or summation of the plot could tell.

In conclusion, I found The Tenth Circle a surprise, and now I'm looking into the dozen or so other books this talented woman, Jodi Picoult, has written. The Tenth Circle is good and it's not a product of the mold that made so many other books whose surface similarity fails to deliver this strong of a story. Four and a half stars.

After getting dumped by her first real boyfriend, 14-year-old Trixie Stone is desperate to win him back. With the help of her best friend Zephyr, Trixie hatches a plan to make Jason jealous at a party.

However, things backfire as the party dwindles, and the two girls find themselves alone with Jason and his best friend Moss. The next thing Trixie knows, she has been raped by Jason...

...or so she claims.

Trixie's parents, Dan and Laura, back her immediately, full of guilt over neglecting their young daughter in recent months in favor of living their individual lives. Although Trixie is initially adamant over what happened that night, the Stones - and many of the individuals investigating - quickly begin to find holes in her story.

As the days progress, Trixie finds herself an outcast at school, taunted by her classmates as a whore. Her story begins to waver, and at moments, it appears that she herself no longer recalls what really happened...if she *ever* did.

Well, if Trixie herself is unclear on the details, it's certainly hard for a mere reader to figure them out! As I progressed further and further through the book, I found myself caring less and less about finding out the truth. I didn't find Trixie a very likeable character. Fourteen-year-olds performing oral sex on random boys and engaging in strip poker -- simply to win back the "affection" of a teenage boy who took them out a few times -- didn't seem like enough to win my sympathy. There was no backstory that would make me wish for her to come out triumphant in the end. She was simply a spoiled, rich kid used to having everything go her way, and she didn't like it when her lucky streak finally ended.

I was also a bit dubious about Picoult's blatant attempts at seeming "trendy." Trixie's best friend, for example, is named Zephyr Santorelli-Weinstein...give me a break!

I'm glad I checked this book from the library, because I'd seriously be upset if I'd actually paid to read this.

I have heard many great things about this author. I started to read reviews as I was reading the book (bad idea) and didn't understand why there were so many negative ones. The first 2/3 of the book was amazing. It was once I went beyond it that I started to understand those reviews.

Daniel Stone is a loving, gentle, protective man. He wasn't always that way. We find out that he has a past that his family either doesn't know much about, or choses to forget. He was completely different as a kass'aq (white boy) growing up in a Yup'ik village in Alaska. He became a husband and father, then did a 180 degree turn around. He holds his only daughter Trixie on a pedestal. He is much closer to Trixie than she is to her mother. Mostly for the fact that he was a stay at home dad all of her life while working as a freelance comic strip writer. His current one, the 10th circle, coincides with his wife Laura's college class that she teaches, which is a study of Dante's Divine Comedy. Though it also connects to his life with Trixie and Laura.

Trixie Stone is fourteen and in love with Jason. Like many other teenagers in love, her heart has been broken, and she is desperate to get him back. When Trixie's best friend Zephyr invites her to a party and convinces her that the best way to get back at Jason is to "make him jealous," things go a little bit too far. A crime is committed that will change all of their lives forever.

It is impossible to tell more of the story without giving away answers to the many questions to find yourself asking as you read this book. So, I will stop there.

I loved seeing Daniel's comic being written. In the back of the book, the author points out that there is a hidden message in the comics. If you look closely, each one has letters that come together and spell out a quote that explains the theme of the novel.

The writing is excellent, the story compelling, and I was pulled in from the first page. Even though I enjoyed reading about the Yup'ik culture, with their traditions and superstitions, the last 1/3 of the story made me take away one star. I didn't think that it was a good idea for the most important parts to take place in Alaska. I found myself reading quickly to sort through all that didn't seem relevant. By the time that I found out the mystery, I was satisfied, though my mind was still reeling from the confusion of the last 100 pages.

All in all, it was an exceptional read, minus the one part. Jodi Picoult is definitely an author I want to experience again.

Tenth Circle is a fascinating and disturbing novel. It's about hidden pasts (a theme Picoult returns to repeatedly), a family in crisis, and the sometimes fine line that divides acceptable behavior and violence.

The Tenth Circle is the story of 14-year-old Trixie Stone, who has recently had her heart broken by an older, more popular boy named Jason Underhill. It's also the story of Trixie's father, Daniel, who appears to be a mild-mannered comic book artist, but who hides secrets about a much more violent past, and Trixie's mother, Laura, who has a more current secret. When a self-destructive Trixie and a self-entitled Jason collide at a party, one rash act changes all of the characters lives forever.

The Tenth Circle features comic book panels between chapters, "drawn by" Daniel Stone. The comics tell a parallel and overlapping story to that of the text. There's also a secret message hidden in the comic book panels - a little game that Jodi Picoult plays with her readers. It's an unusual addition to an adult novel, but works quite well. I like that she's having fun with her books.

However, I had trouble deciding whether I liked The Tenth Circle or not. I read it in a single day, and found that it moved quickly, and kept my interest. I thought that it was well-written, with Picoult's usual deft handling of viewpoint shifts. But the story itself was difficult to pin down, the literary equivalent of quicksand, with the truth constantly eroding away underfoot. This is also something that Picoult is good at, and usually I like it, but not quite so much in this case.

That said, I do think that The Tenth Circle tells an important story. It gives parents a hint of the self-destructive behavior that teen girls can exhibit (very frightening stuff!). Perhaps more importantly, the book gives a window into what the aftermath of date rape is like, for both victim and accused. It's hard to read sometimes, but could certainly provide some talking points between parents and teens, as well as food for thought for anyone else.

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on June 14th, 2006.

Jodi Picoult is the undisputed diva of domestic angst. Her latest work of fiction about families in distress is "The Tenth Circle," an inventive spin on a familiar plot. Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone is growing up too fast. When her mother and father look at her, they think that she is still their sweet little girl. Little do they know that she is living a secret life that is anything but innocent.

Trixie believes that her boyfriend, Jason, is the love of her life until he leaves her for another girl. She tries to get Jason back, but one night at a friend's house, Trixie claims that Jason took advantage of her after she had been drinking heavily. He angrily insists that what happened between them was consensual. Most of the townspeople in Maine, where the teenagers live, are furious that Trixie would try to destroy this popular and talented hockey player who has such a promising future ahead of him. No one except Trixie's parents, David and Laura Stone, believes that Trixie is telling the truth.

The Stones have additional problems, as well. David and Laura's marriage has become stale and predictable, and David suspects that his wife has taken a lover. Trixie is so distraught that she mutilates herself to relieve her psychic pain. Will the Stone family survive all of this tragedy and even more that is yet to come?

Jodi Picoult is a talented author who effectively captures the loneliness, heartache, anger, jealousy, and fear that drives people to commit self-destructive acts. What elevates "The Tenth Circle" above conventional soap opera is the clever integration of a graphic novel that David Stone is writing (terrific drawings by Dustin Weaver are included) with the rest of the book. David, a comic book artist, is penning and illustrating "The Tenth Circle," which is about a man who must travel to the outermost reaches of hell to rescue his kidnapped daughter. Like the hero of his story, mild-mannered David Stone finds himself morphing into a creature he can barely recognize, more animal than human, when he feels that his daughter is being threatened. David thinks back to his childhood in Alaska, to a time when he resorted to criminal behavior in order to escape an intolerable existence. He fears that he may be changing back into the violent and impulsive person that he once was.

The weakest part of the novel is the last hundred pages, in which the narrative takes a long and tedious detour that dilutes the novel's drama and slows the action down to a crawl. Still, "The Tenth Circle" is worth reading for its insightful perspective on the challenges of parenting, the importance of acknowledging and dealing with the past, the subjective nature of truth, and the fragility of family bonds.

The Tenth Circle is the fourth book by Jodi Picoult that I have read. I like that she doesn't shy away from heavy and uncomfortable topics. I also like that she enforces the complexity of these issues by telling the story from the perspective of all her characters. The victim, the perpetrator, the parents and law enforcement all have a voice, and I think this is very important. Jodi's stories are never black and white, they fall in a grey area that is complicated.

However, I thought the Tenth Circle was a mess. Between the rape, partying, drugs, suicide attempts, cutting, infidelity and murder, this story was a convoluted accumulation of undeveloped characters and unnecessary information.

For me to enjoy a book, I either have to like a character, or understand a character. I did not like Trixie, and I did not understand Daniel.

What was there to like about Trixie? Her character was the victim, yet I found it difficult to muster much sympathy for her. I'm not saying she "had it coming," or that she "deserved what she got." She made some pretty typical decisions for a teenage girl, which had huge consequences for her. I understand that the events were traumatizing for her. But her response is to lie, lie some more, and then run away. She doesn't consider the consequences of her actions, and how they will effect her, her family, and the people around her. At one point, I was a fourteen year old girl too, and I never had trouble grasping this concept.

Daniel's character was as flat as a pancake. The author tells us again and again, that Daniel has a secret tumultuous past. We are told how Daniel was bullied as a child and involved in fights. We are told how he was accused of a crime and later exonerated. I can't stress this enough--telling us is not the same as showing us. How did these events affect him? How did they shape his choices? These questions are never answered. We are only told that he reinvented himself to make a life with his family. I'm not even sure it was necessary for Daniel to have a tumultuous past. The story might have been stronger if he was simply a mild-mannered father pushed to extremes for his family.

The Tenth Circle is another formulaic Picoult story, with her signature shocking "twist" at the end. At best, it was mildly entertaining. Overall, it was underwhelming.

When he was a boy, Daniel Stone was persecuted for being the only white kid in his village in the Alaskan brush, and he had to use any means necessary--cheating, lying, stealing, fighting--to survive. But he did survive his childhood, and as soon as he could, he left Alaska forever. He met Laura, a Dante scholar, and fell in love; he became a relatively well-known comic book artist; and he and Laura had a daughter, Trixie, who turned out to be the light of Daniel's life. He squelched his rebel spirit forever and became the mild-mannered man he thought Laura wanted, carrying out his darkest thoughts only in his art.

Now Daniel has been commissioned to write his very own graphic novel. It's called 'The Tenth Circle,' and it's about a man who has to journey through hell to save his daughter. The idea came from Daniel's wife, Laura, who teaches courses on Dante's 'Inferno' at the local college (and who's barely trying to hide the affair she's having with one of her students). But when Daniel's 14-year-old daughter Trixie is (maybe) date-raped at a party, his own life begins to mirror his graphic novel--and Daniel wonders if he can continue to keep his past--and his rage--buried within himself.

Interspersed throughout the novel are acutal pages taken from Daniel's graphic novel; we see his fictional hero, Wildclaw, journeying through hell to save his daughter from the devil. The addition of these pages, drawn by comic book artist Dustin Weaver, is really effective. After all, Daniel isn't a man of words; that's his wife's department. His form of expression is his art, so it makes sense that readers would see his feelings revealed in the pages of his comic book. It's no surprise that Daniel's 'tenth circle' of hell is a place of frigid cold and ice and sharp edges, and that Trixie runs to Alaska when she at last loses faith in her parents' ability to protect her.

The reason I read Picoult's novels, hands down, is for her brilliant characters and her keen insights into human behavior. She's not scared to write honestly about disturbing issues, and she doesn't choose sides; there are no "bad guys" in her books, just humans. THE TENTH CIRCLE is no exception. Picoult looks at the world of teenagers today with brutal honesty and startling frankness and her characters, as usual, are intriguing, complex, and lovingly written. The disturbing issues in this novel are handled honestly and with a lack of sensitivity that's refreshing. And WOW; Picoult's prose is just beautiful.

But this thirteenth offering is my least favorite of Picoult's novels. The Dante metaphor is WAY too heavy-handed, and, by the end of THE TENTH CIRCLE, the characters are overwhelmed by the novel's symbolism. I found the ending of the novel to be really predictable; it's pretty much the same ending she's already written in one of her previous books. Throughout the whole novel, it just felt like there was something missing, something that kept this novel from being a really outstanding read. Overall, I was a little disappointed with number thirteen.

The bottom line: THE TENTH CIRCLE is still a good book, but it's definitely not one of Picoult's best.

They say life can be stranger than fiction. In this case, Picoult's modern-day story about how life can sometimes be a hell is paralleled with Dante's INFERNO. Trixie's mother, an English professor, studies and loves Dante's depiction of hell. Her father, a cartoonist, portrays the levels of hell as depicted in the classic. These two people contribute to their own personal hell and that of their daughter, Trixie.

Trixie's first love has left her, and she struggles with the pain of lost love and abandonment. As she falls apart, her father, Daniel, notices a change in his daughter's behavior, but he chooses not to deal with it. He also chooses not to deal with his wife's infidelity.

Trixie feels she would do anything to get Jason back. Bad advice from a friend leads Trixie down a path of destruction, one ultimately leading to rape and accusation. Ostracized from her old crowd of friends because she has accused the popular athlete, Jason, of rape, her life and the lives of others take a spiral into the depths of "hell".

Cartoons throughout the book render Trixie's father as a hero fighting his way to recue her from the bowels of Dante's hell. As he and Trixie's mother finally face the reality of their daughter, they also face their own problems and pasts.

This book makes an unusual, but creative parallel in comparing Dante's INFERNO with how life can sometimes get when we ignore problems. Although the character development is good and the insights into the Alaskan customs and lifestyle, provided by Daniel's past, are interesting, this novel didn't seem to congeal the way I felt it should.

This novel is primarily about the relationship between a father, Daniel, and his 14-year-old daughter, Trixie, and Daniel's passionate devotion to caring for and protecting her. Despite his efforts, Trixie's life goes from good to very bad in a few short months in her freshman year of high school. The events are set to the background of her mother's fulltime career as a Dante's Inferno specialist at the local college, and her father's career as a superhero comics creator.

As the sequence of tragic choices unfolds in this family's lives, I felt drawn in, shocked at the reality of teen culture and particularly sex-culture, as depicted. At times, though, I felt I was reading anecdotes culled from social science case histories rather than a novel with genuine emotional depth and development. Still, the book was adequately believable until the last third where artificiality took over. The characters lost authenticity as they were shuffled around in service to the plot. In the end, I felt the very important, weighty material of teen-age tragedy was dealt with in far too superficial terms in the interest of creating a formulaic suspense story. There was a lack of depth in exploring character and motivation, especially for Trixie's mother and Trixie's boyfriend who are as central to the story as she and her father.

What is masterful about The Tenth Circle, however, is that no one character is the villain, and no one character is a hero. All make tragic errors, all have human failings. Unlike the superheros Daniel creates, or the stages of hell in Dante's Inferno, there is no defining good or evil in this story; there is no moral judgment implied, except perhaps of contemporary culture itself---a culture that has simplistic notions of good and evil, that reveres individuals at the expense of the common good, and, in its neglect of the needs of its children, allows them to fend for themselves and lose themselves. In depicting this, The Tenth Circle excels.

All at once terrifying and enthralling. For those who've experienced some of the events within, it is "deja vu all over again." For those who haven't, an engrossing and well-drawn entry into a family's desperate and horrific hours; parents' worst nightmares, and the entry of teenagers into the world of adults equipped only with the emotional apparati of children.

This is a story on many levels, which on one level details how selfish acts affect not only those around us, and those we love, as well as those we may not even know.

On another level, it is an entrance into the inner psyche of those who appear "normal' on the surface, living everyday lives, who become, under both much provocation and little, to become people terrifying even to themselves. In other words, all of us.

On yet another level, it chronicles the concepts of sin, retribution, revenge and redemption.

Ms. Picoult's descriptive powers are one of the great strengths of this book, in which she takes you on a journey to the depths of hell on earth in slice-of-life bits and pieces. They encompass everyday life turned into waking nightmare drawn in neon-colored emotion. It is the first book of hers which I have read, but it won't be the last.

An epic tale based on the ripple effects of casual sexuality, it makes the reader aware of how fragile the world becomes with just one act of selfishness; one which can touch any parent, child, lover, or would-be lover.

Jodi Picoult is a very popular writer. My niece will read only her novels. I'd never read any of them and I figured I should give her a try. Not knowing anything about her writing, I simply picked one. The Tenth Circle.

I was surprised when I saw comic book pages scattered throughout. What did I get myself into here? Daniel Stone was the stay at home Dad slash comic book illustrator while Laura taught Dante at the local university. Trixie, their daughter was a typical teenager experimenting with sex and alcohol. I fully understand how a family can get caught up in a situation like this. But the author took this family far beyond the extreme. I could feel each characters pain and rage. These were intelligent, educated people. Some of their actions were not believable.

The story was well written, interesting to read, a real page turner. For me there were a few missing links. We didn't know what Seth wanted to tell Laura until one sentence sneaked in the last ten pages. I never got the connection of why Trixie went to Alaska and how her parents knew to follow her. The whole premise of Daniel's upbringing in Alaska and why it changed him was vague.

Linda C. Wright
Author
One Clown Short

While there seems to be a trend of some reviewers who have found this book lacking in many areas, I must say that I picked it up with zero expectations. I found that, while yes there are more intriguing plots out there with more twist and action, this story was satisfactory. What really makes the book is Picoult's writing style. She writes in such a way as to encourages the reader on, regardless of a what the plot might be. And, yes, I would agree that this plot was a bit contrived and sort of far-fetched; however, I never once thought about putting down the book or regretted purchasing it to begin with.

The story centers around a very complex personality, Daniel; his slightly-less complex - yet more troubled - daughter, Trixie; and his wife and her mother, Laura (the least developed character in the story). Trauma enters the life of this small family resulting from tragedy after tragedy. The plot thickens when tragedy becomes criminal and family members become suspect, causing the girl to flee across the country only to be followed with exasperated hopes by her father. A parallel comic series that is supposed to reflect the work of the father provides chapter intermissions.

While the story is, I concede, a bit lacking in some areas of originality, the book is a good read overall. The writing style is superb and you will enjoy the story as it unfolds like a good television movie.