I have read this novel 3 times. The first time was very emotional. I felt gut punched and raw. The second time, I knew how it ended, but I still felt like my heart was raw at the end. The 3rd and now the last time, I felt the sadness of the book and perhaps the depth of loss of parents that have lost a child. Warning, there is no lightness to this story. It will stay in your head and heart long after you have read it. ( )

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard is a 1996 Penguin publication.

Absorbing family drama…

Three-year-old Ben goes missing when his mother travels to Chicago for a class reunion. The fallout is placed under an intense microscope as a family is torn apart by the loss of their child…

It’s funny what minutiae is stored in my brain sometimes. Years ago, I was looking through the clearance table at my local paperback swap store, when I happened across this book. It triggered a memory in my mind of a colleague telling me they had stayed up late one night watching a movie called ‘The Deep End of the Ocean’ which starred Michelle Pfeiffer. They described it as ‘absorbing’.

So, I decided I would see what the book was like, especially after reading the synopsis.

Unfortunately, the book has been sitting on my shelf all these years, and every time I considered reading it, I changed my mind. Now, as many of you have heard me explain, recently, I’m culling through my massive TBR pile and making some tough choices.

Any book that has been on the list longer than five years is automatically on the chopping block- so I had to decide. Read it right now… or box it up and donate it to the library…

So here we are…

The story starts off like any other book centered around a missing child. Beth is attending her class reunion and decided to take her children along. Her three-year-old son vanishes in a crowded hotel lobby, never to be seen or heard from again.

While normally this trope crops up in crime fiction this book does not even remotely fall into that category, in my opinion.

This a heavy drama that explores the aftermath of losing a child and the effect it has on a family, a marriage, and the remaining children, examining the coping mechanisms each resort to in order to get by.

The damage is horrifying and profound. It’s easy to judge, to take sides, the feel sympathy and empathy, anger, and frustration- sometimes all at once. Each character is flawed, or damaged and they go through years of emotional trauma before a miraculous turn of events opens an entirely new avenue of bittersweet hope and pain.

The novel was published in the mid/late nineties, and it shows in many ways. Some outdated attitudes and stereotypes must be tolerated- some of which are offensive at times. But the main thing to keep in mind is that this is not a missing persons investigation- it is a family drama-and as a result, the pacing at times moved at a snail’s pace. I read two or three chapters a night, then changed over to another book never struggling to put the book down, until somewhere around the half-way mark when I found myself becoming much more invested- until finally, one night I picked it up and literally could not tear my eyes off the pages.

It took a while to get there, but once all the chips were on the table it was riveting.

Now, this scenario has been explored, even before this book was written, and countless times since, but the internal turmoil the story explored is especially profound and emotional, but also frightening, and very, very sad. The characters were not always likeable- in fact, often I wanted to scream at all of them!! Still, the situation demands that judgment be withheld and so I watched from a distance as events unfolded and felt all the emotions the characters did, but from a more analytical perch. It was hard, depressing, in many ways, but also very thought provoking.

The saga does continue with a follow-up book, and I was pleased to discover the author delves deeper into this family drama, though I do hope it is not quite as bleak as this wrenching story.

Overall, I am glad I didn’t box this book up just yet. It will still find its way to a new home, where I hope another reader will someday find themselves entrenched in this realistic, heart-rending story, and that it will stay them, as it will certainly stay with me.

4 stars ( )

I have mixed feelings about this book. I think I wanted to love it more than I did. Technically I think I would give it 3.5 stars.

While at a family reunion, Beth Cappadora's three year old boy, Ben, is kidnapped. There is no trace of him and the family of 5 is torn apart in multiple ways. This story follows the Cappadora family in their recovery over the course of 10 years after the kidnapping.

I have to say that I was really impressed with Mitchard's writing style. The way she fluidly scored her words together was beautiful while the descriptive scenes and emotions were so realistic and raw. However, with the story being so raw and horrible, I got bored with things not happening towards the middle. Beth's tuning out and lack of desire to be around those who loves her and felt sympathy and empathy became old and at times I found myself exasperated with her (like her husband). Granted, I don't have children so I don't how something like this would feel, but I got a little sick of her attitude and negative pull.

It took me quite a while to get through the book and I wonder if I had been in more of a reading mood and had had more time to read if I would have finished the book in a more timely manner and would have liked the book better... Who knows.

But either way, the ending had me a little choked up (that takes a lot from me) and I was glad to have the book end the way that it did. ( )

Fairly complex story about a lost child. Beth's three-year-old son Ben disappears as she tries to straighten out a reservation at a reunion. His disappearance affects everyone in the family, perhaps most strongly his brother Vincent. While Beth does not give up hope of finding Ben, her focus on him may be a big part of the reason the marriage doesn't last and Vincent acts out.

So we get into the lives of more than one family member, tracing their lives through the years, until something astounding happens. It is the aftermath of that something that I found most interesting and perhaps most real. ( )

Such a disappointment for the first book in Oprah's Book Club. Poorly written. I persevered until the end and I got no more satisfaction. ( )