Goodreads Description- One miscarriage too many spelled the end of Max and Zoe Baxter's marriage. Though the former couple went quite separate ways, their fates remained entangled: After veering into alcoholism, Max is saved in multiple senses by his fundamentalist conversion; Zoe, for her part, finds healing relief in music therapy and the friendship, then romantic love with Vanessa, her counselor. After Zoe and Vanessa, now married, decide to have a baby, they realize that they must join battle with Max, who objects on both religious and financial grounds.
There are so many things I wish I could say about this book. I was at a loss of words when I finished it, and I still am speechless. But I want to write this review while the emotions it evoked are still at their strongest.
Picoult's characters are splendid - by the middle of the book I was immersed in Zoe's yearning for children and Max's difficulty with alcohol abuse, and I felt like they were real, breathing people. Vanessa's no-nonsense attitude I admired, and side characters like Dara and Lucy I came to love as well.
The writing was superb as always. The way she engages readers with detail and finesse is extraordinary. It is quite obvious she spent a great deal of time researching not only fertility treatments but IVF in particular. I am also amazed at the legal details she presents concerning GLBT rights as well as Evangelical Christian beliefs. She sites legal cases on both sides of the fence and I am sure Picoult has received positive and negative feedback from both sides of the aisle. Which leads me to the element that really made me appreciate this novel- Picoult's take on gay marriage, and homosexual inequality in contemporary society. I cannot adequately state how inspiring this book was to me in that regard. At first she seems to just present the facts and beliefs from both the Christian right and the GLBT community. It then becomes clear where the author stands when it comes to civil rights for ALL people. I applaud her courage for writing such a controversial book that strongly supports gay rights. What an inspiring read for any person who is having difficulty with coming to terms with their own sexuality.
I normally do not leave quotes from books, but as a liberal Catholic, these words really stood out for me. It is so powerful and eloquent but so simple to understand that I had to include it in my review.
"I remember my mother telling me that, when she was a little girl in Catholic school, the nuns used to hit her left hand every time she wrote with it. Nowadays, if a teacher did that, she'd probably be arrested for child abuse. The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there's no right way or wrong way to do it. We're all just wired differently.
It's also worth nothing that, when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he's right- or left- handed.
After all: Does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?"
My own hopes for the future are that it never matters who is holding the pen. 5 stars!!
Sing You Home: A Novel
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 9,822 ratings
Price: 19.68
Last update: 02-24-2025
About this item
From the award-winning, number one New York Times best-selling author whom USA Today calls a “master of the page-turner” comes the spectacular story of a woman’s complex quest to form a family.
Every life has a soundtrack. All you have to do is listen.
Music has set the tone for most of Zoe Baxter’s life. There’s the melody that reminds her of the summer she spent rubbing baby oil on her stomach in pursuit of the perfect tan. A dance beat that makes her think of using a fake ID to slip into a nightclub. A dirge that marked the years she spent trying to get pregnant.
For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.
In the aftermath of a series of personal tragedies, Zoe throws herself into her career as a music therapist. When an unexpected friendship slowly blossoms into love, she makes plans for a new life, but to her shock and inevitable rage, some people - even those she loves and trusts most - don’t want that to happen.
Sing You Home is about identity, love, marriage, and parenthood. It’s about people wanting to do the right thing for the greater good, even as they work to fulfill their own personal desires and dreams. And it’s about what happens when the outside world brutally calls into question the very thing closest to our hearts: family.
Top reviews from the United States
Regina Niesen5.0 out of 5 stars Does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?
Rochelle Hollander Schwab4.0 out of 5 stars A page-turner with a point
Sixteen years ago, I wrote a novel about a custody fight over the child of a lesbian couple after the birth mother was killed. (In a Family Way, available from Amazon as a paperback or Kindle e-book.) Her surviving partner and co-mother, one of three contestants for their baby, was a woman in her mid-forties who had lost custody of her older children solely because of her sexual orientation.
Since that time, great strides have been made toward achieving equal rights for Americans who are lesbian or gay, including the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the passage of same-sex marriage in six states plus the District of Columbia. Yet although much has changed, Jodi Picoult's gripping novel highlights how much bigotry and discrimination still exist. For in her very current novel, the mother's fitness to parent children is also challenged solely because she is a lesbian, married to another woman.
Over two hundred readers have already posted reviews, and it strikes me on skimming them that quite a few seem to regard the book in a positive or negative light depending on their attitudes toward homosexuality and equal rights for GLBT (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual or Transgender) people. So I'll state my own views up-front: one of my two wonderful daughters is a lesbian, and my husband and I also have a gay nephew who, with his partner, is doing a first-rate job of parenting their adopted son. And I certainly believe that my daughter and nephew deserve equal rights!
Sing You Home is definitely an "issue book" in the proud tradition of older novels like Gentlemen's Agreement or Consenting Adults; as another reader put it, it shows a "political agenda" on Picoult's part. This is an agenda that Picoult forthrightly admits, as the proud mother of a beloved gay son, and to me it is a plus rather than a minus. Picoult does a great job of portraying Zoe and Vanessa as normal people, with all the virtues and flaws that other ordinary people have. And I was happy to see other readers say that the novel had opened their eyes to the roadblocks and injustices faced by GLBT people.
But readers familiar with Jodi Picoult's earlier novels know that this author never writes books that are simply tracts, but rather well-plotted, compelling reads. Her latest is no exception.
In Sing You Home, the custody fight is not over a baby or child who has already been born, but over three fertilized embryos being kept in storage at the fertility clinic where Zoe Baxter and her ex-husband Max have spent much time, and thousands of dollars they could ill afford, in hopes of having a baby. The story is told by three viewpoint characters: Zoe and her ex-husband Max, who are the contesting parties for the embroyos, plus Vanessa, the school guidance counselor whose relationship with Zoe starts with friendship but develops into love and marriage.
As far as their readiness to be parents, the cards would seem to be stacked against Max. Zoe is a graduate of a prestigious school of music, who uses her talents in the helping profession of music therapist. (I was not familiar with this field and found the description of her work moving and fascinating.) Max, on the other hand, is a recovering alcoholic, with a faltering landscaping business, who walks out on Zoe after her most recent pregnancy comes heartbreakingly close to a successful delivery. But Max has an ace up his sleeve in the fight for their embryos. He doesn't intend to parent the potential baby or babies himself; instead he has found a couple with impeccable Christian morality, who he and his lawyers are sure will trump the standing of a lesbian couple.
I found all three to be well-developed characters, though Max and Zoe interested me more than Vanessa, as both of them experienced profound changes in their self-identity during the course of the book. (Vanessa is most compelling in describing the pain of having to hide her true identity through much of her life.) Max is driven by a life-threatening accident to becoming a born-again Christian, and Zoe is stunned to realize that she is fully capable of falling in love with another woman. And though other readers have criticized Picoult for characterizing Vanessa and Zoe as nearly perfect, I didn't find them to be so.
A number of other readers have criticized Zoe's outspoken intolerance of religion, and I agree with them. Walking out on Christmas dinner because Max's brother and sister-in-law emphasized the religious aspects of the holiday was not only rude but hurtful to both her in-laws and Max. (I tend to doubt that Jodi Picoult meant this to reflect her own views on religion; as a fiction writer I know that characters reveal themselves to writers, warts and all, rather than being made up from whole cloth.)
But I also thought that Zoe's insistence on wanting to try to get pregnant again after the stillbirth -- even though her doctor strongly advised against it, saying another pregnancy would be life-threatening -- was a flaw on Zoe's part. Her demand that they go through another IVF cycle was the "straw" that prompted Max to leave her at such a traumatic time for her, but Zoe should have realized that his lapses back into drinking -- something she was aware of but ignored -- made him a poor source of emotional support.
Max is weak, though hardly evil, and his account of the peace and support he finds as a newly born-again Christian fascinated me. Unfortunately, despite the support and acceptance he finds, the pastor of his congregation is virulently anti-gay, and it is largely at his insistence that Max goes to court to deny custody of the stored embryos to Zoe.
I didn't feel, as some reviewers did, that the author condemned all Christians without distinction, but only the fundamentalist, right-wing churches that would demonize Jodi Picoult's child and mine for the orientation they were born with. The outlook of the congregation Max joins is closer to that of the Westboro Baptist Church, headed by Fred Phelps, which specializes in picketing funerals of fallen American service members, than to most mainstream congregations that I'm familiar with. And indeed, I have numerous friends who belong to accepting, welcoming Christian churches.
Phelps' group came to my mind, incidentally, because Jodi Picoult placed them as onlookers in the courtroom, rooting for Max and his conservative lawyers to win. (This was something that surprised me - not that Phelps and his congregation would be against a lesbian couple raising a child, but that there was a large audience sitting in court throughout the trial. When I did research for the courtroom scenes of In a Family Way, I asked to sit in on a family court custody hearing, but was told the courtroom was closed to all but parties involved in the case.)
It also surprised me that Picoult gave both Zoe and the woman Max announced his intention of donating the embryos to the same infertility problem of multiple miscarriages. Though it was acknowledged that the latter might not be able to carry the embryos to term should she become pregnant with one or more of them, it was brushed aside by her husband saying, "but maybe she can." I thought the conflict might have been stronger if she had an infertility issue that kept her from becoming pregnant to begin with, but not in carrying a baby to term.
And I also -- again, like other readers -- would have liked to know what happened to Lucy, though as she had only a year-and-a-half till her 18th birthday, she had probably left home for a better environment by the time of the epilog that ended the story six years later.
But these are minor quibbles. I couldn't stop turning pages -- a turn of phrase only, as I was actually clicking the Next Page button on my Kindle -- to see how this conflict would be resolved. And maybe it's only because the endings to my own books have the same kind of twists, but I loved the ending Picoult came up with.
Since that time, great strides have been made toward achieving equal rights for Americans who are lesbian or gay, including the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the passage of same-sex marriage in six states plus the District of Columbia. Yet although much has changed, Jodi Picoult's gripping novel highlights how much bigotry and discrimination still exist. For in her very current novel, the mother's fitness to parent children is also challenged solely because she is a lesbian, married to another woman.
Over two hundred readers have already posted reviews, and it strikes me on skimming them that quite a few seem to regard the book in a positive or negative light depending on their attitudes toward homosexuality and equal rights for GLBT (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual or Transgender) people. So I'll state my own views up-front: one of my two wonderful daughters is a lesbian, and my husband and I also have a gay nephew who, with his partner, is doing a first-rate job of parenting their adopted son. And I certainly believe that my daughter and nephew deserve equal rights!
Sing You Home is definitely an "issue book" in the proud tradition of older novels like Gentlemen's Agreement or Consenting Adults; as another reader put it, it shows a "political agenda" on Picoult's part. This is an agenda that Picoult forthrightly admits, as the proud mother of a beloved gay son, and to me it is a plus rather than a minus. Picoult does a great job of portraying Zoe and Vanessa as normal people, with all the virtues and flaws that other ordinary people have. And I was happy to see other readers say that the novel had opened their eyes to the roadblocks and injustices faced by GLBT people.
But readers familiar with Jodi Picoult's earlier novels know that this author never writes books that are simply tracts, but rather well-plotted, compelling reads. Her latest is no exception.
In Sing You Home, the custody fight is not over a baby or child who has already been born, but over three fertilized embryos being kept in storage at the fertility clinic where Zoe Baxter and her ex-husband Max have spent much time, and thousands of dollars they could ill afford, in hopes of having a baby. The story is told by three viewpoint characters: Zoe and her ex-husband Max, who are the contesting parties for the embroyos, plus Vanessa, the school guidance counselor whose relationship with Zoe starts with friendship but develops into love and marriage.
As far as their readiness to be parents, the cards would seem to be stacked against Max. Zoe is a graduate of a prestigious school of music, who uses her talents in the helping profession of music therapist. (I was not familiar with this field and found the description of her work moving and fascinating.) Max, on the other hand, is a recovering alcoholic, with a faltering landscaping business, who walks out on Zoe after her most recent pregnancy comes heartbreakingly close to a successful delivery. But Max has an ace up his sleeve in the fight for their embryos. He doesn't intend to parent the potential baby or babies himself; instead he has found a couple with impeccable Christian morality, who he and his lawyers are sure will trump the standing of a lesbian couple.
I found all three to be well-developed characters, though Max and Zoe interested me more than Vanessa, as both of them experienced profound changes in their self-identity during the course of the book. (Vanessa is most compelling in describing the pain of having to hide her true identity through much of her life.) Max is driven by a life-threatening accident to becoming a born-again Christian, and Zoe is stunned to realize that she is fully capable of falling in love with another woman. And though other readers have criticized Picoult for characterizing Vanessa and Zoe as nearly perfect, I didn't find them to be so.
A number of other readers have criticized Zoe's outspoken intolerance of religion, and I agree with them. Walking out on Christmas dinner because Max's brother and sister-in-law emphasized the religious aspects of the holiday was not only rude but hurtful to both her in-laws and Max. (I tend to doubt that Jodi Picoult meant this to reflect her own views on religion; as a fiction writer I know that characters reveal themselves to writers, warts and all, rather than being made up from whole cloth.)
But I also thought that Zoe's insistence on wanting to try to get pregnant again after the stillbirth -- even though her doctor strongly advised against it, saying another pregnancy would be life-threatening -- was a flaw on Zoe's part. Her demand that they go through another IVF cycle was the "straw" that prompted Max to leave her at such a traumatic time for her, but Zoe should have realized that his lapses back into drinking -- something she was aware of but ignored -- made him a poor source of emotional support.
Max is weak, though hardly evil, and his account of the peace and support he finds as a newly born-again Christian fascinated me. Unfortunately, despite the support and acceptance he finds, the pastor of his congregation is virulently anti-gay, and it is largely at his insistence that Max goes to court to deny custody of the stored embryos to Zoe.
I didn't feel, as some reviewers did, that the author condemned all Christians without distinction, but only the fundamentalist, right-wing churches that would demonize Jodi Picoult's child and mine for the orientation they were born with. The outlook of the congregation Max joins is closer to that of the Westboro Baptist Church, headed by Fred Phelps, which specializes in picketing funerals of fallen American service members, than to most mainstream congregations that I'm familiar with. And indeed, I have numerous friends who belong to accepting, welcoming Christian churches.
Phelps' group came to my mind, incidentally, because Jodi Picoult placed them as onlookers in the courtroom, rooting for Max and his conservative lawyers to win. (This was something that surprised me - not that Phelps and his congregation would be against a lesbian couple raising a child, but that there was a large audience sitting in court throughout the trial. When I did research for the courtroom scenes of In a Family Way, I asked to sit in on a family court custody hearing, but was told the courtroom was closed to all but parties involved in the case.)
It also surprised me that Picoult gave both Zoe and the woman Max announced his intention of donating the embryos to the same infertility problem of multiple miscarriages. Though it was acknowledged that the latter might not be able to carry the embryos to term should she become pregnant with one or more of them, it was brushed aside by her husband saying, "but maybe she can." I thought the conflict might have been stronger if she had an infertility issue that kept her from becoming pregnant to begin with, but not in carrying a baby to term.
And I also -- again, like other readers -- would have liked to know what happened to Lucy, though as she had only a year-and-a-half till her 18th birthday, she had probably left home for a better environment by the time of the epilog that ended the story six years later.
But these are minor quibbles. I couldn't stop turning pages -- a turn of phrase only, as I was actually clicking the Next Page button on my Kindle -- to see how this conflict would be resolved. And maybe it's only because the endings to my own books have the same kind of twists, but I loved the ending Picoult came up with.
Joseph J. Truncale5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and complex novel you may want to check out.
First off, this well-written book (Sing you home by Jodi Picoult) is not usually the type of novel I enjoy reading; however, I purchased it for a friend and decided to read it before giving it as a gift. This is a somewhat controversial novel for some people, but in this modern age I think the issues in this book are more accepted than in the past.
I enjoyed reading this book but never give away too much information when reviewing any novel, but if you are a fan of Jodi Picoult novels you may want to check out this book.
I enjoyed reading this book but never give away too much information when reviewing any novel, but if you are a fan of Jodi Picoult novels you may want to check out this book.
Harry Wingfield5.0 out of 5 stars excellent!
I have been a fan of Jodi Picoult’s writing for years. Sing You Home is my favorite so far. I recommend it to fans of Picoult, fans of courtroom drama, and fans of books with strong LGBTQ characters.