Picoult's Inferno

Deep, dark 'Tenth Circle' puts a family through hell

Ashley Simpson Shires, Special to the News

Published March 10, 2006 at midnight

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Jodi Picoult's narrative style makes for a fun and fast read. She excels at developing plots and exploring controversial issues. In short, she's a master of her genre. The question is: What's her genre? Her last two novels were immediate New York Times best sellers. Two of her other novels have been made into movies for the Lifetime Network, and a third is under option.

From her credits alone, it would be easy to dismiss her work as inconsequential airport reading. That, however, would be a mistake, a classic case of "don't judge a book by its cover." Or in this case, by its popularity.

The Tenth Circle, Picoult's 13th novel, is another page-turner with a fascinating plot. It's also on the cutting edge of contemporary literature, integrating a graphic novel within the story line. Picoult has broken out of traditional form to tell a story within a story. She collaborated with Dustin Weaver, a comic-book artist, to create the artwork that illustrates the novel. And it all fits together perfectly.

Picoult tells the story of Daniel Stone, a comic-book artist and stay-at-home father. He's been commissioned to create a graphic novel that depicts a father rescuing his daughter from the world of Dante's Inferno. Daniel is infinitely familiar with the Inferno. His wife, Laura, is a classics professor who teaches a popular course on the text every semester.

In a bizarre twist, the graphic novel begins to reflect Daniel's own life: He finds his daughter, Trixie, huddled on the floor in the bathroom. "Trixie," he says, "what happened?" She's wearing a sheer black blouse that's ripped at the shoulder. Her eyes are ringed with mascara. "Oh, Daddy," she says and starts to cry. "He raped me."

Trixie's descent into hell is reflected in Daniel's artwork (created by Weaver and interspersed between Picoult's chapters). Daniel becomes the hero depicted in the graphic novel, the character who reaches inside himself and finds extraordinary strength. He fights tooth and nail to save his daughter and avenge her rape.

Picoult, for her part, dives fearlessly into the nightmarish complexities of date rape. And she gives a chilling account of the contemporary world of teenagers, which has become dangerously promiscuous. At the party where Trixie is raped, the cool freshman girls play a game called Rainbow. Trixie's best friend, Zephyr, hands out tubes of lipstick in outlandish colors - hot pink, Goth black, gold. The girls then proceed to have oral sex with the guys, and the boy with the most colors at the end of the night is the winner.

Trixie is uncomfortable with the game, but she wants to win back her ex-boyfriend, Jason, a high school senior and hockey star. Zephyr gives her the guidelines for success: "First, look hot. Second, drink whenever, whatever. Third - and most important - do not break the two-and-a-half-hour rule. That much time had to pass at the party before Trixie was allowed to talk to Jason. In the meantime, Trixie had to flirt with everyone but him."

Picoult excels at seamlessly switching points of view: from Trixie's perspective as a high school freshman to her father's perspective to her mother's. None of the characters are innocent. Daniel has become a family man after fleeing a shady past in Alaska. Laura betrays the family and is caught in an extramarital affair the night Trixie is raped. All these factors come together to crush the family's illusion of normalcy and security.

Though The Tenth Circle depicts a family's struggle, a classic battle between good and evil, Picoult doesn't take the obvious and easy way out, demonizing Trixie's rapist. Instead, she reveals how his life also comes crashing down: "Three weeks ago, he had been the number one ranked high school hockey player in the state of Maine. He had a 3.7 grade point average and a penchant for hat tricks, and even kids who didn't know him pretended they did." Now Jason's hockey career is over, and he's looking at time in jail. "He was seventeen," Picoult writes, "and his life was as good as over."

In the same vein, Picoult doesn't wrap up the end of the novel in a "happily ever after" Hallmark way. The plot takes fascinating and unexpected twists, and the ending is never completely resolved. This technique, however, is completely satisfying in Picoult's talented hands.

The Tenth Circle is impressive on many levels. Picoult takes a deep, dark look at the tragedy of date rape. She depicts a family's descent into hell, illustrated by the levels of hell in Dante's masterpiece, the Inferno. And she incorporates a graphic novel into her work, reflecting her protagonist's talent and his epic struggles. Put it all together and you have a remarkable achievement and a great read.

Ashley Simpson Shires is a freelance writer from Boulder.

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