LEAVING TIME.

LEAVING TIME by JODI PICOULT.

SOURCE: A GoodReads win.

INNER FRONT COVER BLURB: Jenna Metcalf was with her mother the night she disappeared in tragic and mysterious circumstances, but she remembers nothing.

Over ten years have passed, and still Jenna reads and rereads her mother's journals, hoping to find some clue hidden there, in the meticulous recording of her scientific research with elephants.

Desperate for answers, Jenna uses all her savings to recruit the aid of a private detective - and a psychic.

Jenna knows her mother loved her. She knows she would not leave her. And she will not rest until she finds out what happened that night.

In her most gripping mystery since House Rules, Jodi Piccoult brings us a powerful story of a young girl's determination to uncover the truth, however shocking and life-changing it might be.

FIRST SENTENCE {Prologue: Jenna}: Some people used to believe that there was an elephant graveyard - a place that sick and old elephants would travel to die.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 51}: I should tell you I haven't dreamed in years. Dreaming is the closest the average human gets to the paranormal plane; it's the time when the mind lets down its guard and the walls get thin enough for their to be glimpses to the other side.

MY THOUGHTS: Possibly the hardest book I've ever had to review for fear of giving a major plot development away. I only hope I'm not saying too much when I say that I can't remember having enjoyed a book so much only to be so disillusioned and bitterly disappointed come the end.

Quite unlike anything else I have ever read by this author though I'm led to believe it isn't too dissimilar to Lone Wolf. 

Essentially a story with memory and the bond between mother and child (whether or not they be human or elephant) as its central themes, as much as Leaving Time concentrates on the love and grief felt by a daughter (Jenna) for her missing mother (Alice), a psychic clairvoyant (Serenity) and police officer turned alcoholic private eye (Virgil) for their careers and previous lives, Leaving Time also delves into the grieving process of elephants.

Set partly in the Savannah's of Africa, partly in an elephant sanctuary, for the main part the story is that of a teenager in search of her mother who, in the wake of an accident at said sanctuary, mysteriously disappeared ten years previously. The story is narrated chapter by chapter by its four main characters, in the case of Alice traversing between Africa and the sanctuary. 

Sound confusing? Despite its multiple narratives, its jumping between the past and present, its assorted subplots I actually found it surprisingly easy to follow, the flow not as disturbed as I had feared, the elephant aspect fascinating. OK, so there were warning signs that things were getting, well, a bit implausible come page three hundred or so but it really was the ending, the last twenty five or thereabouts, that spoilt it for me.