“Plain Truth” by Jodi Picoult (post 5): Flawed Murder Mystery Illustrates Split Inconsistent Narrative and Gratuitous Multiple Personality

As a murder mystery, this novel makes no sense. The reason given by the murderer for killing the baby is that she had wanted to prevent Katie’s illicit pregnancy from becoming known.

But for that purpose the baby should have been buried where it would not be found, not left where it would obviously be found, and where it would obviously implicate Katie as the one and only suspect, as it obviously did.

Is the reader supposed to pity the murderer for being so tragically wrong-headed? Not judging by Ellie’s uncritical reaction, which seems to accept the murderer’s explanation at face value.

Be all that as it may, the questions remain: Why, in the first half of this novel, is a major issue made of amnesia? Why does Ellie say that Katie’s symptoms make her think of Sybil (multiple personality)? Why does Katie perform on two lie detector tests like she is two different people (like she has two different personalities)?

None of these things was necessary to the murder mystery plot. And all of these things were more or less dropped and forgotten in the second half of the novel.

In short, this is another example of split inconsistent narrative (see previous post) and gratuitous multiple personality (search past posts), the reason for which is probably multiple personality trait in the author.