Brielle Weinstein Weinstein itibaren Nova, Chernihivs'ka oblast, Ukraine
This is one of those books that I always see people reading in parks and on the subway, and I just want to shout at them, "Save yourself! There's still time to quit reading!" Really, it's one of those books that has an interesting premise/situation, but doesn't go anywhere. The interesting premise is this: a couple has twins and the father sneaks away with the one twin who has Downs Syndrome. The mother doesn't know about this baby and it's raised by the father's coworker. You're interested, right? Well, watch out, because after the initial birth scene, which is good, nothing happens for 200 pages. The author drags you through the book, dangling the moment that the mother finds out about her daughter in front of you. If this had been an actual good, daring book, it would have started at the point where the mother finds out about her long-lost daughter. Instead, it ends there. Cop out! Waste of time! Emotionally empty!
I read this to my son, who by the way gives it a "4.8". I'm glad he enjoyed it: I didn't tell him I didn't care for it much. There were some interesting ideas, but the flaws outweigh those. Besides the weakness with which Crichton writes about the unconscious (a central theme in the book), I was annoyed by how the three main characters are treated. The blackness of the black character is important, and the fact that a second character is a woman is important to her character, but, as always, the white man's character is not tied to being a man or white and is free to have a little more dimension. The bigger issue is the unimaginative treatment of the unconscious, but the clueless, passive white-man centrism was annoying (it made it difficult for me to suspend belief as well). I had read this in high school and remember enjoying it back then. This one gets an extra star for nostalgia and for entertaining my son. :)