Wish You Were Here, Jodi Picoult, author; Marin Ireland, narrator
Essentially, the novel has two parallel stories. The first takes up about half the book. Diana O’Toole works for Sotheby’s. She is involved in the sale of an important painting by Toulouse Lautrec. The painting is owned by Kitomi Ito, the wife of the famous entertainer Sam Pride, who had been murdered, years before. (The obvious parallel with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, felt a bit contrived). Diana and Dr. Finn Colson, her boyfriend, had planned a trip to the Galapagos, for their vacation. She was hoping that he would propose there. However, with the outbreak of the Covid 19 virus, Finn was unable to go. His hospital was being flooded with patients who contracted it, and it was expected to get much worse. Finn thought she should go alone. She would be safer there, away from him, since he was going to be with Covid patients. Because it was a totally unknown disease, there were few treatment options available. Soon the bodies did begin to pile up.

Diana goes alone to the Galapagos. She becomes stranded on Isabella Island, when all travel to and from the island is canceled due to the pandemic. The island is locked down, all businesses close. While on the island she meets Beatriz, a young, unhappy girl. Beatriz is a lesbian. Diana witnesses her cutting herself and tries to help her. Her father is Gabriel. He had been very rude to Diana, but eventually, his family takes care of her by providing her with a place to stay and also with some food. While she is stuck on the island, waiting to be able to return home, she learns that her mother, the very famous photographer, Hannah O’Toole, who is in memory care at a facility called The Greens, has contracted the virus; she is concerned, but not overwhelmed because they had not been close. Until her mother dies, she does not realize what she has missed..
The second story is about Diana’s experience when she contracts the Covid 19 virus. She has no memory of having been sick, but when she wakes up, after being on a ventilator, she learns that she is one of the few who have survived the virus after being intubated. Her road to recovery will take time, and she is impatient. She suddenly realizes that her sense of reality has been altered. She has had hallucinations and dreams and she is shocked to learn that they were not real; they had been so detailed. She believed that she had been gone in the Galapagos for months, not in the hospital for weeks. She began to question what was important in her life and what she wanted to do with the rest of it, since she no longer had her job at Sotheby’s. Because of the pandemic, the sale of the painting had been canceled, along with her job. She worried about her mental state as she questioned what was real and what was not. She was relieved to discover that her mother had only died in her imagination, but she wondered if her having had Covid, had a bigger purpose and meaning for her life. She began to contemplate making changes ,and she reached out to her best friend Rodney, a black homosexual, for his advice. He, too, had worked at Sotheby’s and had been let go.
I did not find Diana to be a likeable as a character. She seemed selfish and cavalier about exposing herself and others to the virus. She made foolish decisions in her real life and her dream state, decisions a person of her age and experience should have known better than to make. She knew that the pandemic decimated communities and broke families apart with grief. The ill were forced to die alone, shunned because of the fear of catching the disease from them. Their deaths were tragic, and they suffered terribly, since there was no way to alleviate their symptoms. In the beginning, unbeknownst to the medical community, some of the treatments made the patients worse and hastened their deaths.

While the author accurately depicts the overcrowded hospitals, the suffering of the victims because of the trial and error of the treatment during the early stages, she seems to make some snide remarks about the Trump administration, without mentioning names. She does not give credit where credit is due, regarding the development of the vaccine, and makes no mention of the fact that the following administration, led by Biden, promised to eliminate Covid and failed, even with the additional treatment options now available. She makes no mention of the fact that it began in Wuhan China, and simply is critical of the previous President Trump, without using his name, for calling it the Wuhan Virus. Although she takes the book into the future, she stresses mask usage which has largely been useless. Although, in the beginning, it was mostly the elderly who succumbed to Covid 19, today, all ages are suffering, and there are severe side effects from both the vaccine and the virus. Masking has made the population more susceptible to illnesses that have previously been rare in adults, like RSV, and though it had once been rare in children too, they are contracting it in increasing numbers.

The description of the pandemic and its effects on our country and the world, were largely authentic, but the novel felt contrived, from the use of the obvious allusion to the Lennons, to the need to include Beatriz, as a lesbian who cut herself, and the presentation of Gabriel, at first. as a toxic male. It felt as if the author had a checklist of progressive ideas that she had to insert, including her admiration for Jay Z and Meghan and Prince Harry. The use of the word privileged and her being referenced as white, in a comment from her friend, was also, I thought, unnecessary. The difficulty in finding a priest to give the last rights to Covid patients seemed an attack on religion, and it was not an issue I had ever heard of before, as a problem. I did hear that the Hispanic and Black community was hit harder because they worked in essential services, but also, I heard they refused the vaccine in greater numbers. The novel felt melodramatic and a bit overdone, not like the novels this author usually writes. Although it was well researched, the facts that were included seemed to be cherry picked in order to present her political point of view.

I did learn something about the side effects of the virus and/or the treatment that I had not known. I was pleased that mention was made of migraines and heart palpitations, since I have had increased migraines and PVC’s since I had the vaccine, but did not have Covid. I felt the confirmation was helpful. I had, however, never heard that some victims suffered from hallucinations or dreams that seemed to alter their reality. I had heard about the loss of taste and smell, the cough, and difficulty breathing. One escalating side effect, like heart ailments, was not mentioned at all. There was nothing mentioned about the side effects of the lockdown and its draconian measures that caused businesses to close, the economy to tank, and a rise in the crime rate. She did acknowledge that patients died, frightened and alone.

I must admit, I still wear an N95 mask in certain places and do not often go indoors with strangers. I eat outdoors in restaurants and if I am indoors, I limit the time to perhaps fifteen minutes. I believe I am protecting myself from the flu and other viruses, but truthfully, I believe that the only thing that prevents someone from getting Covid, is not being exposed to it. It is highly contagious. If you wear a mask, wear an N95. There are few people who have not had the virus, but many who have had it multiple times. There is no rational reason that exists at this time.