What Happens in the Galapagos Stays in the Galapagos

Or does it?  That's the question in Jodi Picoult's Wish You Were Here.  A book, by the way, that I initially wished I weren't reading.  It was my mom's book club pick.  And she's a fan of serious books, so.  Here's the premise:  

Diana O'Toole is a twenty-nine-year-old New Yorker waiting for her surgeon boyfriend Finn to pop the question.  Already the darling of Sotheby's, her career is on track, and she's itching to get on with her meticulously-mapped ten-year-plan.  She craves stability because her famous photographer mother was never around.  Diana and Finn are all set to go on a romantic vacation to the Galapagos when COVID paralyzes the city.  As a front-line worker, Finn has to stay.  But he urges Diana to go.       

As I ventured deeper into Diana's struggles in the ghost town that is the pandemic Galapagos, I wasn't sure how much I could take.  Diana's luggage is lost.  She has no place to stay, almost no money, and doesn't speak the language.  She even narrowly misses eating a poisoned apple before a stranger stops her.  Yet most depressing of all are Finn's emails.  He goes into excruciating detail describing patients on ventilators, his 72-hour shifts, and feeling hopeless.  It's the stuff of nightmares and catapulted me right back to the beginning of the pandemic and all its uncertainties.    

But then the stranger and his family take Diana in.  She begins to relax and appreciate the beauty of the island, even rediscovering her passion for creating art instead of just selling it.  (Not that there isn't heavy stuff still going on; the stranger's daughter self harms.)  Before long, Diana's frenzied life in Manhattan seems like a distant memory, a realization that Picoult illustrates through this simple but telling line:

"Busy is a euphemism for being so focused on what you don't have that you never notice what you do." (172)

So, yeah, like Diana, ahem, adapting to the Galapagos, I was getting used to this book.  

And then something totally unexpected happened, throwing me for a loop.  It made me make the leap from merely tolerating the book to enjoying it.           

And . . . that's where I'll stop.  Except to say this:

Thanks, Mom, for getting me to open my mind to life's sometimes poorly wrapped curveballs and mysteries.  

That said, it's my turn to pick the next book -- and this time we're reading a rom com.