Delving into a subject very close to home

You can picture the scene in a rival publishers’ boardroom with executives puzzling over how to match her move.

A cookbook for a novel set in a city diner? One Hundred Ways With Hash Browns, anyone?

Picoult laughs at the idea that she might have made life difficult for the writing fraternity at large by adding a soundtrack to her latest offering, Sing You Home.

“I don’t think I’m starting a trend,” she says of the idea that came to her while writing the character of Zoe Baxter, who happens to be a music therapist.

“There was a really important reason for me to include the songs. The book is about gay rights and the people who are opposed to gay rights have never really talked to someone gay or don’t have gay people in their lives — or at least I’m sure they do but they don’t realise it.

“But when you talk to gay people you realise they want the same things as straight people — to be happy and healthy and get married and have kids. Because of that I wanted Zoe’s voice to be heard, literally heard, so that people could listen to her and maybe learn a little and understand that she is pouring out her heart to these readers.

“I figured she would probably write her own songs about this very difficult time in her life so I see the music as a way to make this particular character three-dimensional.”

In fact, what Picoult has tried to do in Sing You Home is take a multi-dimensional look at gay rights and the practical, personal, ethical and religious issues surrounding same-sex parenting.

Three narrators tell the story — Zoe, the baffled newcomer to the prejudices that threaten her dream of family life; Vanessa, conditioned to accepting the limitations of life as a lesbian until Zoe makes her yearn for something more; and Max, Zoe’s troubled ex-husband, torn between his instincts on right and wrong and the teachings of the right-wing evangelical church that has rescued him from his alcoholic turmoil.

All are challenged to stand up for their beliefs when Zoe asks Max to let her use the frozen embryos they have left over after failed IVF treatment so that Vanessa can try to have a baby.

It’s typical Picoult territory — a love story, social commentary and courtroom drama rolled into one with enough potential melodrama to sustain several seasons worth of daytime soaps — but also in typical Picoult style, she doesn’t overplay the subject matter and the characters maintain credibility despite their exceptional circumstances.

What’s also typical about the book is that it has generated controversy but, to Picoult’s surprise, it is proving more divisive in her native United States than any of her previous 17 novels.

“What amazes me more than anything, given that I have talked about the death penalty, stem cell research, domestic violence, school shootings, is that this book about gay rights is the one that caused the most controversy. But if people are up in arms about it, it tells me that this book was exactly the book that needed to be written.”

She hasn’t quite had her home or public appearances picketed yet although she says it wouldn’t faze her. “My husband is a big guy — he’d deal with them.”

But she has had a lot of correspondence, not all of which could be classed as fan mail. “I’m getting letters from both sides of the spectrum,” she says.

“One lesbian woman said, thank-you so much for writing this book — it’s so important to see this out in the mainstream and see my life represented in fiction. I get a lot of teenagers asking what to do about coming out to their parents or who’ve come out and their parents don’t react well.

“And then there are letters from people saying I don’t like this book and you are bashing Christianity. I’m not bashing Christianity — most of my Christian friends are very supportive of gay rights.

“Unfortunately there is a very small but very vocal minority of Christians with a lot of power and money who want to ban gay marriage and are opposed to same-sex parenting.

“Some of the letters say, you’re targeting my religion and faith and making us look like a bunch of bigots, but the truth is that, every word in Pastor Clive’s mouth (the cleric who leads the charge against Zoe and Vanessa), came from an interview I did with Focus on the Family (a conservative evangelical lobby group). If they want to complain about putting a bad face on Christianity, they ought to talk to that group.”

Perhaps Picoult should not have been surprised by the reaction. Just six of the 52 states in the US have same-sex marriage and it was only last December that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law requiring gay members of the US defence forces to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal was repealed.

Against that backdrop, Picoult reckons Ireland, with our new Civil Partnership law, is doing great, although she was a little dismayed to discover it doesn’t address the still thorny issue of same-sex parenting.

She has a personal interest because when she was in the middle of writing Sing You Home when her college student son, Kyle, came out.

For his sake, she hopes her book is irrelevant by the time he wants to settle down and have a family.

“I kind of want the same for all my books. I would not presume to say they will be read in 50 years time but if they are, I would love it to be for a historical perspective.

“I would love for us to evolve so much that the controversies I discuss are all passé. If in the future someone reads Sing You Home, it would be great if it was like reading Gone with the Wind and asking how on earth could we have had slavery?”

Like that classic, a personal favourite of Picoult’s, several of her own novels have been made into films although the best known, My Sister’s Keeper, was a mixed experience for her as the ending was radically changed.

She feels more confident that a movie of Sing You Home planned by comedienne and TV host Ellen DeGeneres will be true to the original story.

In the meantime, however, Picoult has another novel to finish. Lone Wolf is about the dilemma facing siblings asked if they want to switch off their father’s life support.

The opening chapter is on her website already, along with her notes, pointers, excerpts, explainers and the downloadable soundtrack to Sing You Home.

The songs are Picoult’s own lyrics set to music and sung by her good friend Ellen Wilber and the result fits somewhere between Janis Ian and Emmylou Harris.

Although the publisher’s website requires passwords from the purchased book to unlock the downloads, you can listen to the songs without restriction on Picoult’s own website.

Perhaps her publishers don’t know that or maybe they’ve just decided some faults shouldn’t be fixed.