Leaving Time (with Bonus Novella Larger Than Life)

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Regardless … a very good story; unexpected and unanticipated twists and turns; some intense emotional reactions! Her descriptions of elephant society make me love those animals while her emotional engagement with the two main characters, Alice and Jenna, made me care about them as much as they cared about each other.

They are very intellectual and emotional animals, and the discussions about how they dealt with grief was heart wrenching. You can guess from the inclusion of the character Serenity that there is a paranormal dimension to this story. Together they revisit the site of the defunct elephant sanctuary and inexplicably find new evidence about the case. The irony for Jenna is elephants remember everything but she cannot remember much about Alice at all. Sometime late that evening, Alice regains consciousness, checks herself out of the hospital and disappears.

If a matriarch dies, so does the collective knowledge of that family, and the society disintegrates. Jodi Picoult shows us the complexity of elephant society, especially in relation to how the females of the species care for themselves, their offspring and each other.

This book does not have a story worked around a moral dilemma, and there's no court room drama either. the writing and storytelling compelled the suspension of disbelief and acceptance of the unimaginable. Even elephants who had no direct experience with Masaai reacted this way, suggesting social learning and communication. 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.Virgil was just the pick-me-up the book needed, and Jenna helped him to pick himself up out of his drunken stupor too.

Throw in a young girl looking for her mother who disappeared when she was a child, a psychic who has fallen from stardom and an ex cop who prefers a drink,not to mention a murder, elephant stampede and dad in the mental institution. I’ve always thought elephants walk as if they have music being piped into their heads that no one else can hear.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. Then, she lay her tire down on her best friend’s grave, like a wreath, and left – almost as if she knew that Tina was the one who needed comfort, now.