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It is almost impossible for any parent to consider a tiny outstretched hand, a tousled
head or beguiling smile, lost in an instant, swept into a mind-numbing abyss.
Kidnapped, disappeared...
And it becomes even more unbearable if the parent is partly to blame.
In THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN, her debut novel, Jacquelyn Mitchard takes readers on this
sad, fist-shaking journey.
Beth Cappadora, a photographer in suburban Wisconsin, loses her three-year-old, Ben,
during a high school reunion in Chicago after leaving him with his brother Vincent, who is
seven. Ben simply vanishes from a lobby crowded with Beth's former classmates.
At this point Mitchard, who is a wonderful storyteller, steps back and, instead of dousing
the reader with sap, hits them with almost textbook precision.
Beth and her husband, Pat, are neither heroes nor rogues. Their reactions to this torment
are ferocious in their simplicity. Beth never quite becomes a sympathetic character, more
often inviting a slap than a hug from the reader. She quickly descends into a black
depression, her sanity dangling languidly while Vincent grows into a troubled youth and
Kerry, a baby when Ben is lost, grows up oblivious. Beth steps back from the edge, as much
for the sake of narrative as herself, but continues to pinwheel, seeking balance.
Pat is elusive. He loses himself in his work, and moves the family to Chicago, setting
them up for an almost impossible plot twist that at first glance would seem to settle
their anguish but only leads to more.
Mitchard runs some interesting subplots through the book. Like Beth's still-simmering
relationship with her high school beau. Or detective Candy Bliss, a lesbian, who yearns to
be a mother.
Mitchard is an easy read. Her years as a syndicated columnist make her dialogue sound
familiar and the narrative flow.
But it's hard to like the characters in Mitchard's well-crafted story, or even feel sorry
for people who are so self-absorbed. I suspect that's because they take us
where no one wants to go. As Mitchard writes, "If she dared embrace what she really
felt about Ben's loss -- pulled apart the skeins of stupidity and lack and the truth that
everything that matters in life is decided irrevocably in seconds --- Beth knew something
would happen to her. And it was that, the beyond-grief, the sealing-up of a mind still
expected to produce order and plans, which she dreaded."
THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN does indeed take her there, and, in the end, makes that dread
ours.
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