I won’t hide it – Jodi Picoult is my favourite author of the moment. Her books are clever, deep, thoughtful and emotional. Her characters are almost always well-rounded and developed to the point that they start being real people, and the plots always include unforgettable twists and moments where you want to express your bottled emotions out loud due to something that has happened within the story that engrossed you to the point of reality. My Sister’s Keeper was never an exception; it was the third Jodi Picoult book I picked up and read, and even though I can’t say that it was/is my favourite of hers, it still had one of the greatest impacts on me emotionally.

Films made from books are never as good, for many reasons. They leave things out. They change plot points, ditch and remould characters, and usually rush too fast through the story for the audience to actually understand what’s happening. I was gearing myself up, not for a disappointment, but for an average viewing of an average (or less) attempt at trying to bring one of the best books to screen. But now, after having seen the film, I can safely say that, for the first time ever, I have nothing to complain about. Not even the ending.

Spoilers – book and film – beneath.

The novel is based widely around Anna Fitzgerald – a IVF conceived girl who decides, after years of providing blood and bone marrow to save her sister’s life, she wants to sue her parents for rights to her own body. In the book we learn more about Anna than we do Kate, and the question of why Anna really files the lawsuit is never revealed – or even given a second thought – until the end. The ending, too, is centred around Anna; her death after being involved in a car accident with attorney Campbell Alexander twists and pulls on you until you realise just how pointless going through court actually ended up being. In the film, however, Anna isn’t the centre of attention; Kate, her sick sister, is. Kate is given the limelight, the emotional moments, the final death at the end.

The ending of My Sister’s Keeper the novel has been described as one of the best in modern-day fiction, but obviously not everyone agrees with that. The whole surprise and suddenness of Anna’s death managed to affect everyone in different ways; people either bawled their eyes out, stared into the distance with their eyes and mouth wide open, or threw the book across the room in frustration. Picoult includes a twist like this into every one of her novels, and whether or not you are totally engrossed in the story depends on whether you’ll see it coming. I never saw it coming, and even though I spoiled the death for myself on Wikipedia, I still reacted in the second way; my mouth hung open, and my eyes scanned the page for ages afterward to check that I hadn’t misread. This wasn’t the ending used in the film; instead, Kate does what she was almost inevitably going to do, and dies after a long cuddle with Sara, the mother.

Am I disappointed?

For the first time in probably my whole life, no.

The acting was incredible – Cameron Diaz was a perfect Sara and portrayed her in an immaculate way (in a way that makes you want to pull out her hair and smack her across the head in total annoyance, but at the same time makes you feel sorry for her and the decisions she has to make), and I know I will never doubt her again. Abigail Breslin, who played Anna, was exactly the girl I pictured while reading the novel, and was really enjoyable to watch. Alec Baldwin… well, I have no idea where I’ve seen him before but I never doubted for a second that he would be a perfect Campbell Alexander, and I wasn’t wrong.

I find it very hard to cry during films, even when I know I really need to, but watching this made it very easy. The one thing that hit me the most and made me break out into uncontrollable sobbing was the death of Taylor, Kate’s love interest who had a similar condition to her (I’m not sure if he had leukemia too, or a different cancer). I think what made me cry the most was the perfect directing and mix of on-screen acting and music score. In the book that moment was a shocker, but it never really affected me, whereas in the film it made me nothing short of miserable. I felt like it was me who was experiencing the death of my closest friend and first love, even though Taylor only had half an hour max of screen time. If it hadn’t been for the acting, and for the music that powered up and played during the revelation, I probably wouldn’t have cried as much as I did. And from then on I couldn’t stop crying, because the remainder of the film was simply as powerful and emotional as I would have ever hoped it to be.

Although there were things that bugged me slightly – like the ages of the girls (I swear Anna was 13, not 11), the fact that Jesse was nothing more than a filler (I loved in the book how he was the arsonist who his dad was trying to catch), the cut storylines of Julia and Campbell and how the name Andromeda was never mentioned, due to the fact that we never got to really know Brian and his stargazing hobbies – none of it mattered, in the end, because what they did include in the film made the whole picture simply perfect. Right from the beginning, while watching the opening clips and hearing Anna talk about her situation, I knew I was going to be in for a treat.

Was the film better than the book? Absolutely not, but I have yet to come across a situation in which it is (maybe, just maybe, though, I could mention Disney’s version of Louis Sachar’s Holes). At the end of the movie the entire cinema was crying silently to themselves and staring thoughtfully at the screen, in no hurry whatsoever to be the first out the door like usual. I can’t actually stress in words just how good that film was, and just how proud I am of Picoult for writing a novel that would one day be one of the only films to reduce a whole room to tears. I personally think that the guys making that movie have possibly made one of the best films-from-book ever. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was wrong with it. Nothing worth worrying about, anyway.

Thoughts?