Customer Reviews

The Deep End of the Ocean

5 star:		(108)
4 star:		(83)
3 star:		(48)
2 star:		(59)
1 star:		(66)

 

 

Even if you have seen the movie (by the same name), READ THIS BOOK. Mitchard weaves such a hauntingly beautiful tale about every family's nightmare and the aftermath. While checking into a hotel for a class reunion, Beth Cappadora turns around to realize that her 3-year-old son is gone. The first part of the book describes so many emotions that the family goes through: the shock, the horror, the frantic search, then the realization that life must go on. But how do you? In a split second, everything has changed, her relationship with her husband, the other children, as well as friends and neighbors. A bond develops with one of the officers who refuses to give up on this case. The ending is not what anyone expects and truly shows the strength and absolute beauty of a mother's love. Wonderfully paced, this is one of those rare stories which I will never forget.

I highly recommend reading The Deep End of the Ocean. Get everything that you need to do done, because once you start reading this book, you won't put it down. This book shows dramatic emotions of a family after a loss of their three-year old child. Beth Cappadora is in a hotel lobby in Chicago one day with her two sons Vincent and Ben, when suddenly, a mother's worst fear, when her three-year old son disappears into a crowd of people, seemingly with a trace. Nine years have passed, and Beth runs into a boy who would be the same age as Ben would be, and looks exactly like him. Could this be her lost son Ben? This book shows how a family can move on, even with such a sad tragedy in their lives. The Deep End of the Ocean is a wonderfully written story of ordinary people caught in a disaster. Surprising and stunning, this book is definitely one you will want to read.

This book has over 400 pages of every parents WORST nightmare, and it goes into it in a way that is really diturbing... why?... because it could happen... and, it HAS happened.

I really don't think any of us has the slightest clue of how we would react to something as tragic and terrifying as that, and in my opinion, Jacquelyn Mitchard did an excellent job in describing what ONE MOTHER did, how she felt, and how all her world changed in 10 minutes.

I agree with some of the other reviewers... she's is not a highly likable character, but, under the circumstances, who would be?... She's not your picture perfect mother... but then again, no one is... still...the author makes you feel what she's feeling, even if you don't understand her... and her family.

The reason why I put 4 stars was that I felt the book was a bit incomplete, because we never find out so many things that in my opinion should have been explained... also... in the end, we really don't know what happened to the family, and after NINE years of KNOWING every single detail, it was a bit hard to let them go.

Over all, a good, entertaining, but extremelly frightening book. However, I would love to ask the author a few questions that remained unsolved...

Initially I found the book interesting. But it quickly began to drag with side trips into Mom's slutty behavior which had little relevance to the plot. Her unexplained bad treatment of her husband was a mystery, but I kept reading. Admittedly, even that didn't dissuade me from reading. At times, the book showed glimmers of worthiness when it focused on the remaining son and his feelings.

But what finally did it was the multitude of metaphors which kept clogging the narrative--metaphors which were occasionally brilliant but more often baffling. One particularly horrid one referred to an emotion leaving the mom? (I believe it was the mom as I don't have a copy and am working from memory). This emotion (relief?)was compared to "water rolling off a rising submarine" ? Brother! I really had to laugh over that one! Overall, I would not have wasted my time with this book except I had borrowed it from a very nice lady who said she had really enjoyed the book and I didn't wish to hurt her feelings by not finishing a book she had loved. As for me, I had to force myself (like a submarine trying to submerge in wading pool! ) to finish.

Although the author obviously has talent, she has wasted little of it on this book about characters with whom audiences do not wish to identify.

The mother in this book is a basket case, completely uncaring about her family, and the reader finds himself unable to sympathize with her over the loss of her son. Most readers will sympathize with her husband instead; he has born the brunt of her problems for years and continues to do so after she loses her son at a class reunion.

I really had problems getting into this book. Admittedly, at the end, it did leave me thinking about it somewhat, but it is slow and unrealistic. I don't consider this book to be any sort of "future classic." If I don't consider reading a book for a 2nd time, then something's wrong (my friends have always teased me about reading books over and over); this book was borrowed from a friend and returned promptly when I finished it.

Not horrible, but there are thousands of other books more worth your time.

This story began as a real gut-wrencher with a kidnapping and its devastating impact on the victimized family. However, it was difficult to ever sympathize with the mother because she came across as so selfish throughout the book. That could be forgiven, but the ending (which I will not give away) was so ridiculously implausible that it ruined the entire book. By that point the story had pretty much run out of steam anyway, so it would have been difficult for any ending to wrap things up satisfactorily. This book would have gone nowhere had it not been pimped by Oprah.

..I just could not get myself to feel much sympathy or identification with Beth, the main character in this story. We all have our moments when we look away from our children because we are preoccupied. I don't think many of us have them when our kids, who are all small, are in a busy lobby of a hotel in Chicago. I felt the main character was narcissitic and shallow, and while there are certainly people like this in the world, to really connect with her in this particular story, it would have helped me to LIKE her, which I didn't.

While the book is well written and the storyline keeps the reader going, what I found to be the most intersting aspect of this book was the way the older brother was portrayed. I found the guilt and his response to it to be what kept me reading this book. I wanted to know that he would be okay. While I found myself not really caring about the mother, I DID care about the son. His feelings, as a confused child missing his favored younger brother, and as an older child, angry with the adults in his family, were captured well and he was a character I could care about.

I wouldn't say don't read this book at all, because I will read almost everything, but I wouldn't put this one at the top of my list. Sorry Oprah!

The quote on the front of my book says "Riveting..twists that will spin you around." I don't know who at Newsweek wrote that but I'm just an average Jane and not once was I "spun around" by something that happened. It was a very depressing book, not riveting. I picked it up and put it down several times, not really caring about the shallow, selfish characters and the only reason I even finished it was because it was the only book in my bag during a long plane ride.
A child, Ben, is lost and found again after several years. The book goes through these years focusing on the mother (who doesn't seem to really love any of her children) and the older, tortured, brother who "told Ben to go away." This 447 page book could have easily been trimmed down to 150 pages for a better story.

I was highly dissapointed in this book. If you are a mother of children you know how impossible it is to live like this woman lived. As well as the fact it is impossible to have a favorite child, one may do something you like more than others but there is not favorite. Also you can not know how it feels to lose a child unless you actually have, I know what my mother went through when my brother passed away, and well frankly this book barely touches on those feelings. The story doesn't explore very many things in depth except the mothers feelings and the oldest childs feelings, however the author goes on all these sub plots that she tends to leave hanging. I would not recommend buying this book,it isn't worth your time.

As any mother or father fear, what if something happens to their baby...what if their baby gets lost? What if the possibility exists that the baby was kidnapped? What if the baby is killed? Never seen again? What if you never find out WHAT HAPPENED to your missing baby?

Well, then how do you cope? How do you go on? Go to work? Be a spouse, a partner, a parent, a friend? How could you move on when you don't know what happened to your baby?

Will you survive the experience? Will your marriage survive? How about the other children? They need to live their lives. They have to have your support. Can you be there for them without always thinking about the missing baby? Can you celebrate birthdays with joy? How about Christmas?

Then, as months turn into years, you watch how other family members seem to be moving on. They now laugh and smile and look forward to tomorrow. Do you hate them? Do you choke down your anger that they have moved on? Have they, god forbid, forgotten your lost child?

Will you ever get over this? Or, the question really is, will you ever not keep reliving THAT day, when everything went so wrong? If only you did this, did that.. ....will you ever stop the replay that goes over and over in your mind? Will you hate your spouse because he has coped better than you?

Will you hold the older child (so very young himself at the time) responsible forever for not watching his brother better?

Will you ever forgive yourself? And then forgive the compounded sins you assume as every day passes?

And so the author presents the truth behind the inconceivable. In a novel brave enough to follow the aftermath of a toddler kidnapping, she explores the turmoil a family goes through as the tragedy unfolds before them all. Ironically, they are called "the survivors " of the kidnapping. What could be furthur from the truth?

The reality of trying to deal with these unresolved questions ultimately takes it's toll. This novel explores the psychological turmoil of a family experiencing an event that is judged as one of the most heinous crimes possible. You can not help but hope and pray that they all get out of the deep end of the ocean.