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    Songs of the Humpback Whale
    Songs of the Humpback Whale
    Songs of the Humpback Whale
    Audiobook15 hours

    Songs of the Humpback Whale

    Written by Jodi Picoult

    Narrated by Jim Colby, Liz Morton, Jonathan Davis and

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The powerful debut novel from New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult, Songs of the Humpback Whale is a moving story of love and family told through the eyes of five people: Jane Jones, her daughter Rebecca, and three very different men in their lives. After a watershed moment in their marriage, Jane leaves Oliver, her renowned marine biologist husband, and begins a journey across the country with Rebecca in search of understanding about her troubled past.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 15, 2009
    ISBN9781440718113
    Songs of the Humpback Whale
    Author

    Jodi Picoult

    Jodi Picoult received an AB in creative writing from Princeton and a master’s degree in education from Harvard. The recipient of the 2003 New England Book Award for her entire body of work, she is the author of twenty-seven novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers House Rules, Handle With Care, Change of Heart, and My Sister’s Keeper, for which she received the American Library Association’s Margaret Alexander Edwards Award. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children. Visit her website at JodiPicoult.com.

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    Reviews for Songs of the Humpback Whale

    3.5/5

    59 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 3/5
      Not the endding I was hoping for. Very well read.
    • 4/5
      This book jumps around a lot, but I'm glad I stuck with it.
    • 2/5
      I have enjoyed many of Jodi Picoult’s books but this one is so repetitive it bored me.
    • 3/5
      Mom and daughter leave husband/father, take cross country trip to find themselves. find love and loss. Poor ending, doesn't match rest of the book.
    • 3/5
      Meh. That's the best I can come up with. I didn't like characters - not a single one. The jumping around through time is not particularly effective because it removes a lot of the suspense that could have been offered and the story, frankly, isn't quite good enough to make it work. There are some flashes of the type of writer Picoult will become though. Particularly at the end. Of course, there is no suspense to go along with it. Perhaps those people who enjoy reading the end of the book first will enjoy this more than I did.
    • 3/5
      This book is not one of my favorite Jodi Picoult books. The book is written in the voices of five characters, which I don't mind, it makes the book different and interesting. What I didn't like was the daughter telling things backwards (events in the story told from the end to the beginning) because you essentially knew what was going to happen at the end of the book before getting to it. I usually find the best part of a book is the ending and that's why I keep reading a book that isn't keeping my interests. I kept reading, hoping for a different ending, but it didn't happen. I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I still didn't find it as good as most of her other novels.
    • 1/5
      I liked hearing the story from different perspectives. I did not like the way the story jumped through time. I’ve read other stories where this is done and I’ve liked them much better – the jumps made sense, they flowed well and progressed the story well. The jumps in this book did not. The time shifts made the flow chaotic. While I wasn’t thrilled with the ‘growth’ of each character, everyone grows in their on way so I generally don’t get ruffled too much by it, these people seemed to just go in one big useless circle-. The fact that the parents didn’t even see that each time they had a fight and split the one who was most damaged was the daughter didn’t show much growth at all.
    • 3/5
      Quite a confusing and difficult read to start with. It's a narrative from different perspectives, and in different time sequences. Well worth sticking with, though, it was a good story, and I'm glad I read it. Not exactly a cheerful, happy read, but intriguing family life story.
    • 2/5
      Not her best. Plot works, but the one voice told backwards wasn't well integrated with the forwards rest of the story.
    • 5/5
      Extremely moving and honest.
    • 3/5
      This is my least favorite of Jodi Picoult's books so far. All the talk by the husband about the humpback whales was kind of dry and boring to me. Not only is this story told from the point of view of 5 different characters, but it also switches back and forth in time so much that I was confused part of the time. There is a heading to tell the reader who is speaking before each chapter and there are dates at the beginning when it switches around in time. I just didn't enjoy this one as well as her other books.
    • 2/5
      This book is not one of my favorites by Picoult. It is on the weak side as far as the writing and character development goes. The story line itself is fairly believable but I think Picoult fails to make her characters believable. For instance, Jane Jones, the main character is supposed to be the character that everyone circulates around but I don't feel convinced of that. Her strength is commented on by her brother, but I don't see her as anything but fairly ordinary. Her problems with her father are pretty common and not extreme so the fact that they have sich an effect on her life with her husband is hard to believe. The part of the story where she is traveling with Rebecca is humorous but I feel that Rebecca is never fully developed. Her relationship with Hadley is a series of weak vignette that leaves me questioning what her attraction for him is. She seems like a young girl with appropriate behavior for her age, not more mature as Hadley claims. Their relationship seems forced to fit the story line. The ending, while sad, does not pull all the loose ends together, although it makes the reader think it does. I would not recommend this in book or audiobook form as it does not deliver.
    • 3/5
      I love Jodi Picoult! And although this wasn't one of my favorite of hers, I still have to give it to her!
    • 3/5
      I usually adore Jodi Picoult's work, but this and her other very early books I just cannot get into very well. While I prefer this book to Harvesting the Heart, it was still somewhat slow and the characters were not quite as well developed as in some of her later novels. Still, the book was interesting, as her books always are.
    • 3/5
      My jury is out. The author may describe the family dynamics she does to try to be realistic abt pathos & love. But I’m left w/ the nagging feeling that her plots if not her personally are extremely naive abt the damage her parental figures are doing to their children. In 2 titles now, the parents psychological cannibalize their child(ren), esp. the mothers. These are hard for me to read & in my view, don’t finish on a better note even though there are superficial patch-ups. I’m not enjoying these on the whole except for Lone Wolf.