Wish You Were Here : A Novel

Wish You Were Here is the twenty-seventh novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Jodi Picoult. When she looks back, Diana O'Toole sees that it didn't take all that much: an overwhelming need for a break; a suggestion from her boyfriend; a reluctance to forfeit a pre-paid vacation; a luggage mishap; an impulsive response to a taunt; and the underestimation of a nasty virus.

Suddenly, she is solo on a small, Spanish-speaking island of the Galapagos that has closed down, with no spare clothes, no food, no hotel, virtually no internet, no cell phone cover, very little cash and no ATM, and no Spanish-speaking boyfriend.

She is sure Finn Colson was going to pop the question, just before her thirtieth birthday, according to her life plan, but now the surgical resident is at New York Presbyterian, working seventy-two-hour shifts caring for COVID patients, and she's in paradise, alone. Sporadically, emails drop in from Finn detailing the horrors his work now entails. Diana writes him postcards, not knowing when or even if they will be received.

When the island remains in isolation, Diana's enforced vacation extends. She wonders whether her job at Sotheby's is still hers. By now she has connected with a troubled teen, Beatriz, been given accommodation by the girl's great-grandmother, and is spending time with Beatriz's father, former tour guide, Gabriel Fernandez. He takes her, often illicitly, to see the local sights.

She becomes familiar with the locals, trading her quick-drawn sketches of locals for food and goods at the feria. This time away from her high-pressure life, and her interactions with the locals, see her questioning the meticulous plans she and Finn have made for their careers and their lives together. Then, one of her tourist activities leads to a near-death experience, and everything changes…

When she eventually returns to Finn, her perspective on many aspects of her life has, understandably, changed radically, and that includes her fraught relationship with her mother. Now in a Memory Care facility with early-onset Alzheimer's, Hannah O'Toole was a world-famous, intrepid features photographer whose travels severely reduced her time with her daughter, leaving her to be raised by her loving father.

Once again, Picoult gives the reader a tale that enlightens as well as exercising the emotions. The story features a myriad of topics for which the extent of her research is apparent on every page: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Darwin, art auctions, a certain famous widow, the experience of COVID survivors, and that of the large team of mostly-unsung personnel who care for them during hospitalisation and, of course, the Galapagos Islands. She manages to make it all so very interesting, and works in a brilliant twist. Moving, informative and thought-provoking, this is another outstanding Jodi Picoult novel.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.