My Sister's Keeper: Why the Movie was Better than the Book

I'm going to turn a lot of heads here. I think that a movie is actually better than the book it was based upon. In this case, it was Jodi Picoult's novel My Sister's Keeper. This heart-wrenching novel tells the story of a family whose daughter gets cancer. They conceive Anna to, for lack of a better phrase, provide body parts to save her health. But Anna gets tired of this and decides to sue her parents to get her life back.

Beware, there are spoilers. I recommend reading the book first.

The characters act their age.

I don't like the way that Picoult writes kids (at least in the two books of hers that I read). Anna was supposed to be about thirteen, yet with all the terminology and philosophy she throws around, she sounds forty. Kate sounded a bit older herself. In the movie we can see the characters actually act like kids. There is some narration, but it's more age-appropriate. 

There's no ridiculous romantic subplot.

What? You're telling me that in a book that deals with serious things and a thought-provoking topic with interesting characters, you don't want 200 pages to be devoted to Anna's lawyer's side romance that adds nothing to the plot? Gee, I can't imagine why. Someone needs to tell this author that romance is not an obligatory component in books. I wish more authors realized this. I've had countless novels, especially in the YA realm, ruined because the author wanted to focus on a predictable boring romance instead of the initially interesting storyline. 

Actually, there are less distracting subplots in general.

The one about Anna's brother getting into trouble? The one about her dad's adventures in firefighting?  All possibly interesting, but even moreso when small issues are cut to make rom for the story at hand. Anna's was the one I really wanted to hear about. 

The ending isn't random and includes conflict resolution.

At first I thought the ending of the book was masterful. But hard-hitting doesn't mean it's good. When Anna dies it's like they spent hundreds of pages arguing and debating for nothing. Kate survives, and everyone is happy...kind of. Of course, considering that the family mostly cared about Anna because she existed to help her sister, maybe they weren't totally sad after all. I think that in writing, characters should work toward their ending. Chance incidents like in the novel do happen, but it makes everything that happened in the previous pages irrelevant. The debate is rendered unimportant.

In the movie, though, Kate and Anna make peace with things on their own. Kate sees how her sister is suffering and doesn't want that for her anymore (she's already more compassionate than the parents!). The ending, while not easy, comes a bit more natural.

Don't get me wrong. My Sister's Keeper is a thought-provoking book, though it has its flaws. It can also be argued that the book has more room to explore the issues, but when it comes to storytelling I thought the movie was the winner.

Have you read this book? Did you think it was better than the movie?