Nineteen Minutes

I just finished the book Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Did I tell you we're doing a book club? Yeah, we are. Anyway, this is the second selection. It's a book I've been wanting to read for awhile and I was thrilled when Jessica chose it as October's book. I read another book by Picoult awhile back and was thoroughly impressed by her ability to broach controversial subjects while remaining unbiased and allowing her narrators to speak to the heart of the reader, making you really wonder what you feel about a particular issue.

Anyway, without saying too much by way of storyline (because I know fellow book clubbers read my blog), I'm kind of bugged. I know that I have slack standards when it comes to morality in the books I read, and I was able to overlook Picoult's too-often use of bad language and borderline pornographic descriptions, but I can't stop wondering why authors compromise literary achievement in order to pull a quick one over on their readers. Does an ending need to be a surprise to be considered good? Can't we just sometimes let the story speak for itself, let the readers glean what they may, and let that be that?