Songs of the Humpback Whale

I recently read a very thought-provoking book titled Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.  It is a story about trauma told in the five voices of five different main characters including four who interweave to tell the story chronologically and one who starts at the conclusion and tells the story in reverse chronological order until she gets to the beginning of the timeline while everyone else's narrative is concluding.

I haven't really digested it all.  Hearing the story from five people's perspective, one in reverse, is fascinating as is the theme of unresolved trauma.  Perhaps all trauma remains at some level unresolved.  Perhaps that's what makes it traumatic- our very lack of ability to digest it completely or to fully understand each other or ourselves in it.  Listening to these five characters struggling to understand themselves and engage with each other exposed them- their vulnerabilities, their hopes, their griefs, their best attempts at living well.

This is a book which I will want to read again.