The Deep End of the Ocean (Oprah's Book Club) (edition 1999)

I know I loved this book cause it is on my amazon list: Ten great Books I've read in 2004. Would like to read again. ( )

A young mother asks her seven-year-old son to watch his three-year-old brother while she registers for a school reunion.

When the registration takes a long time and she returns, her three-year-old son Ben has been kidnapped.

A good story of interpersonal live and the results on a family when a tragedy like this happens.

Years later, a young boy comes to the woman's door to see if she'd like her grass mowed and the mother, Beth, swears it is Ben. ( )

I originally read this years ago when it wad featured on Oprah's book club. I liked it.

SPOILER ALERT—this review discusses the plot beyond what some people who haven’t read the book may want to know.

There are lots of reviews of this book out here on the web so perhaps it doesn’t really need one more. But reading several made me want to tap those reviewers of the shoulders and point out they were looking at the author’s right hand when the really interesting part of this books was in her left. Reviewers focus on the familiar Act One of the story—the missing child, the mother paralyzed with grief neglecting the rest of her family, the brave father trying to hold everything together and keep life going for his other kids, the large cast of supporting characters. These elements are all very well rendered—sometimes heartbreakingly so (think The Lovely Bones).

And when, years later, the missing child accidently turns up on his family’s doorstep, not aware that he was ever missing, I wondered how the writer could need another couple hundred pages to wrap this thing up. It’s at that point that many of the online reviewers lost interest; many state that they skimmed or had to force themselves to read the rest of the book. But Deep End of the Ocean is not the formula family-crisis tragedy these reviewers seem to crave.

The author performs such graceful slight-of-hand that everybody focuses on the separation while the real heart and soul of this book is the reunion. Sure, to have a reunion, first you have to have a separation. But, the loss in Deep End of the Ocean—as crushingly sad as it is—is preamble. The hard questions at the heart of the book are about reunion. Can reunion be more than superficial and what are the costs? ( )

I had high hopes for this book, and enjoyed the beginning, but when [SPOILER] Ben was found so much later in life, I didn't really see any way for there to be a resolution as tight and well-formed as the first half. I felt as though the author kind of just trailed off, which I suppose was all she could do, as she was painted into a corner. I honestly hadn't read enough about this book or movie to know that this would happen; I really thought that Ben would have been found dead.

I was also reminded of the books "The Face On The Milk Carton" and "Whatever Happened To Janie?" from my childhood--essentially the same story, but from the other side of the coin. As those were semi-trashy young adult fiction, this comparison was not necessarily favorable. ( )