Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Tenth Circle

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Tenth Circle

Jodi Picoult is the author of Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect (1995), Mercy (1996), The Pact (1998); Keeping Faith (1999), Plain Truth (2000), Salem Falls (2001), Perfect Match (2002), Second Glance (2003), My Sister's Keeper (2004), Vanishing Acts (2005), and The Tenth Circle (2006). In 2003 she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction.

She was born and raised —happily—on Long Island… something that she believed at first was a detriment to a girl who wanted to be a writer. "I had such an uneventful childhood that when I was taking writing classes at college, I called home and asked my mother if maybe there might have been a little incest or domestic abuse on the side that she'd forgotten about," Picoult recalls. "It took me a while to realize that I already did have something to write about – that solid core of family, and the knotty tangle of relationships, which I keep coming back to in my books."

She, her husband, Tim Le Veer, and their three children live in Hanover, New Hampshire with a dog, a rabbit, two Jersey calves, and the occasional Holstein.

In March 2007 she will publish 19 Minutes, in which a student enters the local high school with an arsenal of guns and starts shooting, changing the lives of everyone inside and out, raising questions about what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether a person is ever whom they seem to be.  There's an excerpt on Picoult's website, but no direct link.  However, if you visit her homepage and browse about 2/3rds of the way down you should see the link.

Did you know?

• Some estimate that one in six American women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape during her lifetime.  Rape facts & myths.
• The Tenth Circle contains a "hidden message" (the letters are hidden in the illustrations).  I'm not going to tell you what it is, but if you've read the book and didn't have the time or energy to work it out, you'll find the answer at this blog.  There's also a discussion forum on Picoult's website that discusses the "hidden message" and confirms that the message as shown in the blog is correct.

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This article relates to The Tenth Circle. It first ran in the December 6, 2006 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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