8.47 pm

I've been debating whether or not to post this. After all, some of you might go see the movie, and I wouldn't want to ruin it or anything. On the other hand, very rarely do I have a book experience that leaves me feeling so incredibly used.

I went into the bookstore the other night on my way to yoga, and picked up a book. It was a rather innocuous looking paperback, and I flipped through it and read a bit. It seemed interesting, largely because the bits I'd read made it seem as though the substance of the book revolved around some pretty thorny ethical dilemmas. The owning-the-rights-to-your-own-body-kind, and the when-do-parents-stop-having-the-ability-to-make-good-decisions-for-their-children kind. So I downloaded the audio version to take with me on the plane.

It started out great. It was the kind of book you can't put down. In fact, after I got off the plane Saturday, I kept listening. I put my headphones in when I walked around the city Sunday. I probably walked more than I would have otherwise. I raced home to finish listening to it Monday. Then, Tuesday morning I think it was, I read a review in the New York Times about this particular book. Which was being made into a movie. Which was not, as I was beginning to suspect, about thorny ethical issues at all. Instead, it was simply one in a line of books by the same author all dealing with the same exact subject: dying children.

I kept reading the book, mostly wanting to prove the Times article (which took a rather dim view of both the author, the genre, and the novel) wrong. A book this good couldn't be that bad, could it? Oh yes. Those wonderfully tricky questions about morals and ethics and black and white lines got lost in the melodrama and pathos of the novel's end. It's not very often that I finish a book and wish I could take those 13 hours of my life back.