I really enjoyed this book. I anxiously awaited it as I think it was released later than normal. Then once I had it I was saving it because I hate when it's over and I have to wait for her next book. However, this week I gave in and once I started I couldn't save it anymore. In retrospect I am sure my mother got tired of hearing about elephants. Maybe that is why, one Saturday morning, she woke me before the sun came up and told me we were going on an adventure. There were no zoos near where we lived in Connecticut, but the Forest Park Zoo in Springfield, Massachusetts had a real, live elephant—and we were going to see her. Tusk asked Jodi a few questions about her experiences with elephants while researching for Leaving Time. Jodi’s new novel, Leaving Time, was released in the US, Canada, and Australia October 14, 2014, and in the UK on 4th November. 13-year-old Jenna Metcalf is on a quest, searching for her mother, Alice, an elephant researcher, who disappeared 10 years earlier after a tragic accident at their sanctuary for former circus/zoo elephants in New England. Leaving Time explores the mother-daughter relationship, be it elephant or human, and the idea that those we can't forget are never truly gone. …more

Leaving Time Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary Leaving Time Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary

I listened to this on on Audio and thought it was great. It is done with several different narrators: The mother Alice, her 13 year old daughter Jenna, and Serenity (the psychic who is featured in "Where There's Smoke"). Alice's chapters were fascinating. As I said with the prequel, I LOVE elephants and I found all the information given about these magnificent creatures fascinating. They are very intellectual and emotional animals, and the discussions about how they dealt with grief was heart wrenching. I later learned that some of the elephant stories were based on real life elephants. Another one of the narrators is Virgil, the detective who was at the scene ten years ago when the elephants at the sanctuary trampled and killed an Employee. This is when Alice vanishes from the hospital. Jenna hires Virgil and Serenity to help her through her journey to find answers. The book contains a lot of information about elephants: how they live, what they eat, how they behave, how they play, how they grieve for deceased loved ones, and so on. Also, sadly, how elephants are mistreated in captivity, especially circuses. This was all interesting but did slow the story down (and might bore readers uninterested in the subject).I cried and cried when as in regular Pioult style she throws you for a loop! Just when I thought I had it all down and figured out, noooppee, I get shut down. I called a friend right away and told them to get this book! It is amazing! The storyline is so beautiful and adding the plight of elephants with information to learn more about these wonderful creatures is very moving. Oh. My. God. This book was incredible! I read this at the recommendation of Ginger and am I glad she did! It is incredible. This is a story about grief and family and healing and ---- elephants! I have always liked elephants - they are so incredible. The bonds they make, their ability to empathize. Did you know they are one of the few animals that can recognize that the reflection they see as themselves?

Summary and reviews of Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult - BookBrowse Summary and reviews of Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult - BookBrowse

Also interspersed with the story are extensive passages about elephants, who are highly intelligent animals with close family ties. An elephant mother would never desert her family, unlike what Alice apparently did to Jenna.Maybe I would have listened. But maybe, too, I would have just closed my eyes. Maybe I would have tried to memorize the smell of bug spray on my mother’s skin, or the way she absent-mindedly braided my hair, tying it off on the end with a stalk of green grass. If you're not enthralled with elephants the way I am, you probably won't feel the emotional attachment to this novel that I did, beginning with the Alice's first section, written by the scientist doing field research on elephant memory and their grieving process.

Jodi Picoult · Leaving Time (2014) Jodi Picoult · Leaving Time (2014)

When we got to the zoo, I raced along the paths until I found myself standing in front of Morganetta the elephant. As the story unfolds the reader learns about events at the elephant sanctuary that led to the tragedy all those years ago as well as the current search for information about Alice. The book has an unexpected denouement which I found bewildering, and this reduced my overall enjoyment of the story. Emily Dwass (April 10, 2015). "Q&A: Author Jodi Picoult on balance, exercise, kids and elephants". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 14, 2021. Told in two parts from the POVs of Jenna, Alice, Virgil and Serenity, the first part builds up to a confrontation with Jenna’s father, Thomas, whilst the second part begins to unravel the mystery surrounding Alice’s disappearance.

The Sanctuary was where Jenna had been born, where her mother and father Thomas Metcalf worked together, caring for their beloved elephants, and learning of the close familial bond which elephant families share. Alice, Thomas and Jenna lived and worked with Gideon and his wife Grace, and Grace’s mother Nevvie, all devoted carers for many years. But one night everything changed – a tragedy that no-one had foreseen, and one which caused the culmination of events which led Jenna to enlist the help of strangers to find her mother. Russell, Anna (October 17, 2014). "Jodi Picoult: On Books and Elephants" . Retrieved August 14, 2021– via Wall Street Journal. While pouring over one of Alice’s elephant research journals, Jenna discovers a dollar bill in the origami shape of an elephant bookmarking her mother’s passage about 2-3% of science not quantifiable. Taking this as some sort of cosmic sign, Jenna seeks the help of Serenity Jones, a once famous, world renown psychic who has lost command of her Gift, fallen on hard times and settled in quiet obscurity in Boone. I first read the two prequels to this book: "Where There's Smoke" and "Larger than Life". I enjoyed both of them, but I really loved "Larger than Life", so I knew right away I wanted to read this novel. Alice, the main character in "Larger than Life", is a Scientist who studies grief among elephants. She has mysteriously disappeared over ten years ago, and her daughter Jenna is determined to find her or find out what has happened to her mother. The parallels between mother/daughter relationships with humans and elephants was so wonderful! New evidence in hand and with a new sense of hopefulness, Jenna seeks out Virgil Stanhope, a private investigator who was a detective in the Boone Police Department involved in the botched investigation of Alice Metcalf’s disappearance a decade earlier. Virgil is a broken man, plagued by troubles with the bottle, but in the end agrees to work with Jenna and Serenity to find the missing Alice Metcalf and end his despondency over his incompetence and failure in the initial investigation.

Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads Leaving Time Series by Jodi Picoult - Goodreads

Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest. The first is Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons—only to later doubt her gifts. The second is Virgil Stanhope, a jaded private detective who originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers. With her rich prose and descriptions, Jodi draws parallels between elephant herds and human families whilst skilfully demonstrating the emotional impacts created by an unseen umbilicus being torn away and I thoroughly enjoyed the way she switched between the perspectives of Jenna, Virgil and Serenity, along with Alice’s memories of her research and life, with the elephants providing a strong emotional centre. Virgil, an ex-detective turned private eye, who now prefers to investigate the contents of a bottle, became disillusioned with his job whilst investigating a case at the elephant sanctuary in which one person was found dead and the other unconscious. While his gut instinct had told him to dig deeper, his partner, Donny, had warned him off investigating further, preferring to bury an inconsistency in the evidence they had procured. I don't know if I loved this book because I didn't see the end coming or I hated it because the end is something that has been done, over and over. I thought she did it cleverly though so I am going to go with love. It was so interesting and even as Jenna is remembering being killed I am like, "Oh she was kidnapped." I didn't even at that point think she was dead! I really want to do a reread and see if things are different now that I know. Kind of like The Sixth Sense. I am glad I did not see any spoilers ahead of time. Classic Jodi.

The memory of an elephant? Turns out it’s a real thing. At the Elephant Sanctuary in TN, elephants reacted so badly to helicopters and planes that they had to institute a no fly zone overhead. The only helicopters most of these elephants would have ever encountered was 40-50 years prior, during the culls when they were captured and brought to the US. After ten years of her mother going missing, Jenna sets out to find her mother with a retired detective and psychic. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Emily Kert (August 15, 2014). "Review of NH Author Jodi Picoult's Latest Novel Leaving Time". New Hampshire Magazine . Retrieved August 14, 2021. I wouldn’t characterize myself as a tree hugger but I do love the natural beauty of the great outdoors and have a passion for observing the flora and fauna of my environment. There’s some BIG fauna in this book! Serenity’s fake psychic readings are successful, she says, because people look for sense in the nonsensical. Do you agree or disagree? If a psychic reading brings someone comfort or helps them grieve, do you think it matters if the message is faked?