Holiday Sale! Get an annual membership for 20% off!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • Published:
  • Sep 2020, 432 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light comes a riveting novel about the choices that alter the course of our lives.

Everything changes in a single moment for Dawn Edelstein. She's on a plane when the flight attendant makes an announcement: Prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong.

Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, in which she helps ease the transition between life and death for her clients.

But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a career Dawn once studied for but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.

After the crash landing, the airline ensures that the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation to wherever they want to go. The obvious destination is to fly home, but she could take another path: return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways—the first known map of the afterlife.

As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried with them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us? And who would you be if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"The dual-life construct can be confusing, and readers may find it not sufficiently explained, but Dawn's story offers keen insight on the limits of love. Picoult's fans will appreciate this multifaceted, high-concept work." - Publishers Weekly

"Whether on death and dying, archaeology, or quantum physics, Picoult's erudition overload far exceeds the interests of verisimilitude or theme...A midlife crisis story stifled by enough material for several TED talks." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about The Book of Two Ways was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Cloggie Downunder

interesting and thought-provoking
The Book of Two Ways is the twenty-fourth adult novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Jodi Picoult. By some miraculous quirk of fate, Dawn Edelstein is one of a handful survivors of a plane crash. During the crash, her thoughts go, not to her family, but to Egyptologist and former lover, Wyatt Armstrong, last seen fifteen years earlier, and the dissertation she never completed. Instead of going home to her husband and daughter, Dawn flies to Cairo, heading for the dig where she believes Wyatt will be. Her sole intention is to complete her dissertation.
Or:
By some miraculous quirk of fate, Dawn Edelstein is one of a handful survivors of a plane crash. During the crash, her thoughts go, not to her family, but to Egyptologist and former lover, Wyatt Armstrong, last seen fifteen years earlier, and the dissertation she never completed. Dawn returns to Boston, to her job as a death doula, to a marriage strained by a recent incident and to a teenaged daughter unsettled by self-image and hints of tension between her parents.

Dawn in Egypt recalls her childhood with her superstitious Irish mother, her three seasons in Egypt, and the thrill of discovery: a new tomb and a new lover. As she once again works a dig, her earlier time shared with Wyatt is uppermost in her mind: how their relationship, both professional and personal, began, developed into a fiery passion for work and each other, and then was cut short in a mercy dash back to Boston.

Dawn in Boston is reminded of her sudden return from Egypt to a dying mother, a hospice, guardianship of a teenaged brother, and the overwhelming responsibility settling on her shoulders. With her marriage now a little wobbly, she thinks back to meeting Brian Edelstein and their shared life. At the same time, Dawn attends a new client, a dying woman of her own age with some parallels to Dawn’s life.

As chapters alternate between Egypt and Boston, yielding certain pieces of information, it seems Picoult is taking the reader on two of many possible future life paths of a woman whose thoughts, feelings and emotions have been distilled by a near-death experience. Or, at least, that’s how it looks for most of the novel, until Picoult throws the reader for a loop.

This is a very cleverly constructed story, although mixed ratings indicate that not all readers appreciate the ride. Picoult has patently done a mountain of research. Some of the Egyptology is a little heavy going: the brain tends to skip over tongue-twister Egyptian names and the photographs are indistinct but hieroglyphs are clear; the stories, myths and legends are captivating, as are the Irish superstitions and the death customs. The role of the death doula is fascinating and if the quantum mechanics is quite involved, the concept of parallel universes and alternate potential futures is intriguing.

As usual, Picoult’s characters are larger than life, if not always entirely endearing. Dawn seems to have some double standards and readers may not find her apparently easy switch between lovers easy to forgive. As always, interesting and thought-provoking.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.

JHSiess

An Unusual but Compelling Story from Jodi Picoult
The inspiration for The Book of Two Ways first struck more than a decade before author Jodi Picoult actually wrote the book. Her son was majoring in Egyptology at Yale University. She happened to walk by and see him working on a translation of The Book of Two Ways, a road map to the underworld that is more than 4,000 years old. She thought to herself, "Great name for a novel." She discovered that the text is about choices: “The deceased could take either a land route or a water route to get to the field of offerings, which is the ancient Egyptian version of heaven. No matter which path you took, you wound up where you were supposed to be.”

Picoult came up with the story of a middle-aged woman on a fateful flight. She is a death doula traveling alone while her husband, Brian, is at home in Boston. As the plane is headed for a crash landing, the woman is surprised to find that what flashes before her eyes in what she believes will be her final moments isn't the life she has built with her husband and child. Rather, she sees the life she originally planned that never came to fruition as an Egyptologist with a different man she left behind fifteen years earlier. “She has to decide: What do I do with this information?” She scuttled the idea when a planned trip to Egypt to research her subject matter had to be canceled.

But she resurrected it some six years later as she conversed with her son's thesis adviser, telling her she still wanted to write the book. She had always known that she "needed to write about -- the construct of time, and love, and life, and death." She took her up on her offer to travel to Egypt, and also set about learning about the work death doulas perform. Picoult is known for her meticulously-researched novels, and The Book of Two Ways is no exception. She immerses readers in Dawn's world, especially the archaeological digs she is part of in Egypt.

Relating the story through a first-person narrative from Dawn, her protagonist, readers learn that Dawn wanted to be an Egyptologist after studying Ancient Egypt in fourth grade and falling in love with the culture. She earned a full scholarship to the University of Chicago and fifteen years ago she was a Yale graduate student working in Egypt on her third archaeological dig when she learned that her mother was dying from Stage 4 ovarian cancer. Her brother, Kieran, was only thirteen years old, and their father, a U.S. Army captain, died in a helicopter crash when their mother was carrying Kieran. Unlike their father, their mother did not die alone. Left with responsibility for Kieran, Dawn could not resume her studies at Yale, much less go back to Egypt. Instead, she got a job at the same hospice facility where her mother died, eventually earning a Masters in Social Work and becoming a hospice social worker. A decade later, she became a death doula and for the past five years has run her own business, providing the same services as midwives, but at the other end of the life spectrum. After thirteen years, Dawn believes that she knows a lot about death, but as Picoult's story opens, she is about to learn that she is wrong. About a lot of things.

While working at the hospice, Dawn met her husband, Brian, and they welcomed a daughter, Meret. Brian, a physics professor, has always been steady, thoughtful, capable, as Dawn describes him. But now their marriage is in trouble as a result of Brian's flirtation with his post-doctoral student, especially when he misses Meret's birthday party. For Dawn, it was a betrayal. She is also struggling to balance the needs of her business and parent Meret, a fourteen-year-old who, unlike her thin parents, struggles with a weight problem.

After Dawn survives a plane crash, she is overcome with emotion. Impulsively, she opts not to return home. Instead, after thinking about Wyatt Armstrong, with whom she was in a serious relationship when she had to abruptly leave Egypt to care for her mother, she heads to Egypt. Theirs was a classic love story: he was arrogant, self-centered, and immensely talented, and they competed as graduate students, but eventually fell in love. When she arrives, she finds that in the intervening fifteen years, Wyatt as ascended professionally and is now the Director of Egyptology at Yale. Obviously, Wyatt is stunned to see her because Dawn didn't just leave Egypt. She never explained why she was leaving and did not remain in contact with Wyatt. Still, when he asks why she has come back, she cannot bring herself to tell him that he is the reason she has abruptly returned. They resume both working side by side and their relationship, even though Dawn is married and Wyatt is engaged to be married to another woman.

The story is told via dual timelines. In an alternate reality, Dawn survives the plane crash and returns home to work on her marriage, and parent Meret. She takes on a new client, Win, whose son died at the age of sixteen as a result of a drug overdose. She embroils Dawn in her quest to locate her son's father, a painter with whom she had an affair. And Dawn's musings about the life she could have chosen are not without guilt.

The Book of Two Ways moves at a steady, but not fast pace which is appropriate for the subject matter. Picoult invites readers to join Dawn, a compellingly flawed character, on her contemplative journey of reflection about the path she did not choose and what might have happened if she had. Her desire for a second chance at being a Egyptologist, and to find out if her relationship with Wyatt could have worked out had she not left him without a word of explanation, is inspired when she is unexpectedly thrust into a crossroads in her life. Brian's work is in quantum mechanics -- the theory that parallel universes can exist and two versions of the same life be lived within them. Has Dawn been living an alternate life within a parallel universe? Is that what one of Picoult's narratives actually means?

It all makes sense when Picoult seamlessly merges the two narratives. Secrets are revealed that require each character to come to terms with the truth. Dawn is forced to make decisions about what she really wants and how her future will unfold after she has been given an opportunity to discover how a reunion with Wyatt will play out and faced the problems in her marriage head-on. Just like the Egyptians who believed that in the afterlife they would traverse one of the paths depicted in The Book of Two Ways to the Field of Offerings to enjoy an eternal feast.

In the hands of a less skilled writer, The Book of Two Ways could have become bogged down in sentimentality, but Picoult elevates the subject matter, deftly taking Dawn on a journey of self-discovery that feels neither contrived nor heavy-handed. Rather, it is a thoughtful exploration of a middle-aged woman's re-evaluation of her choices as she works her way through the complexities of her life in an effort to find happiness and fulfillment without hurting those she loves. Picoult always crafts thought-provoking stories that examine and meld several themes into a cohesive whole and The Book of Two Ways showcases her unique ability to do so in a believable, uncontrived, and emotionally resonant fashion. In true Picoult style, the story is related with compassion, sans judgment, and with the expectation that her readers will contemplate the questions she raises and find their own answers. In this book, Picoult takes that approach to its ultimate conclusion with an ambiguous ending that provides plenty of fodder for argument at book club meetings.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Jodi Picoult Author Biography

Photo: Nina Subin

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Small Great Things, Leaving Time, The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister's Keeper. She is also the author, with daughter Samantha van Leer, of two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.

Author Interview
Link to Jodi Picoult's Website

Name Pronunciation
Jodi Picoult: pee-coh

Other books by Jodi Picoult at BookBrowse
  • Vanishing Acts jacket
  • The Tenth Circle jacket

19 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Demon of Unrest
    The Demon of Unrest
    by Erik Larson
    In the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election, the divided United States began to collapse as ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket
    The Avian Hourglass
    by Lindsey Drager
    It would be easy to describe The Avian Hourglass as "haunting" or even "dystopian," but neither of ...
  • Book Jacket: Roman Year
    Roman Year
    by Andre Aciman
    In this memoir, author André Aciman recounts his family's resettlement for a year in Rome due ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.