Three Black Swans — A Critique-al Review
Warning: This book is somewhat of a mystery, and contains surprises which may be spoiled by reading this review. If you truly love to be surprised, please read the book first.
This 2010 book from Delacorte Press by Caroline B. Cooney is emotionally similar to her book "The Voice on the Radio;" it brings me to a happy end after the tears have run down my face.
Language — As usual, I love the similes and metaphors that Ms. Cooney uses in her descriptions. Things like:
"At first, the doctor's remarks stayed outside Missey, hanging there like the clean clothes dangling from ceiling racks," or, "Half the night, she stood in the dark, while the facts of her life sorted themselves like a pack of cards being dealt," (It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who uses too many commas) or, "Missy was not deflected, which was typical; she was a pit bull," or, "I feel like a dead soccer ball. Not even worth kicking."
Characters — In this book, Ms. Cooney attempts to bring a happy (or at least satisfied) ending to all of the major characters. That is somewhat nice for the reader, but it is also somewhat awkward for the plot. Usually a plot has good guys and bad guys, heroes and villians, but in this case all the bad guys try to reform themselves into good guys by the end, so there are no real villians. Also, one of the subplots — the lack of money for sending the girls to college — was never resolved. But if the great-grandmother actually has money (also never resolved), she could have offered to use it to further the girl's education, resolving this subplot in a satisfactory way.
Point of view — Three asterisks (* * *) between paragraphs are often used to indicate a change of place or scene, or a change of time to "later," but Ms. Cooney frequently uses this to indicate a change in point of view. When you are reading a series of paragraphs it is usually from the point of view of a single character. However, Ms. Cooney's writing in this book often leaves you wondering whether the author herself remembered exactly which person's point of view was being used. For example:
Genevieve was laughing. "About Ray," she reminded him.
Jimmy could think of no way out. He swallowed. " ... A friend of Ray's ... forwarded him this weird video from this morning. ..."
"Weird" was not the word for the video. "Dramatic and emotional" defined the video.
The weird part was standing in front of Jimmy.
Now, since "weird" is a feeling held by the person standing in front of Jimmy, I could only interpret the last sentence to be from Genevieve's point of view. But that means the previous paragraph describing the video as not "weird" but "dramatic and emotional" should also be from Genevieve's point of view. But Genevieve had not seen the video yet, so it could only be from the author's point of view, which is a big no-no. The author should not put his or her own opinion onto the page outside of the character's opinions, but sometimes Ms. Cooney does this. At the end of the first scene of the book, she writes, "Missy Vianello had not fallen out of her own time. She had fallen out of her life." Which is an excellent line with which to end the scene, but it was definitely the author's point of view, as if she had prefixed it with, "Little did she know, but ...." But getting back to "weird," This entire section between asterisks is supposed to be from Jimmy's point of view. And Ms. Cooney could have spared me the confusion over who's point of view this was by writing: "Weird" was not the word for the video, [thought Jimmy]. "Dramatic and emotional" defined the video. The weird part was [the person] standing right in front of [him].
Maybe the book would be easier to read if it were told from fewer points of view — rewrite the points of view of the peripheral characters like Jimmy or Rick. But we still must have at least one point of view from a parent in each family (probably the mothers) in order to bring in the history and background of what happened. Instead, we have the story told from the point of view of each of the main characters — all six parents, all three children, as well as several minor peripheral characters. I much prefer the point of view of her book, "Family Reunion," which is told from a single point of view.
Race — Usually books are written with race-neutral characters. That is, skin color is often left out of the descriptions. (Which is also true with this book). This allows the reader to more easily identify with the characters. I read almost the entire book assuming that the characters were somewhat like me. I happen to be mostly western European with a smidgen of Native American (Choctaw). Until I read the statement: "'They even look like black swans,' said Ned, watching the video for the hundredth time." And my reading was stopped in its tracks. How could the character say that? The two girls on the video were wearing pink sweaters, not black. And then I remembered the descriptions of their hair like fuzzy black halos, or their favorite colors in clothes — "lemon and turquoise and hot pink ... And lime. Anything green." — the kind of colors a pink-faced white person would look ghastly in. Then I had to re-read the entire book thinking about the girls as having dark skin, but it was harder to clearly imagine identical triplets because I don't have the ability to clearly discriminate differences in how people with dark skin look. It's like the pink sweaters, the obvious gets in the way of significant details. I think that the author should have left out Ned's comment about them looking like black swans. Ned could have said, more accurately, "This whole situation is like finding a black swan." Which was the whole point of the black swan reference anyway — an unpredictable event, only explainable after the fact.
Oopsies — At his wife's insistence, Phil looks at the video on his cell phone on pages 210-211, but then on page 253 we have Phil ("Claire's father") saying, "I haven't even seen the famous video yet."
Most of the good books I have read by many different authors have one or more oopsies in them. The paperback version of "The Voice on the Radio" by Caroline B. Cooney, has the boyfriend saying he never used last names on his radio show, but on earlier pages he does use the last names on his broadcast. Maybe every great book starts out with an oopsie somewhere in it. It is only the latest versions of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" which have Nearly-Headless Nick saying he has not eaten in nearly "500" years, instead of "400" years, when the second volume has him holding his 500th death-day party. And it was only the second version of her "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" that straightened out the order of which ghost came out of Voldemort's wand first, Harry's Mother not his Father. (That was a great piece of clean editing.)
Also, at the end, Missy texts: "What do I have to do, graduate a year early?" Which will never happen because, as Claire said in the beginning of the book, "you ... are an average student with no activities except communicating and shopping." And she is already six weeks into her sophomore year, so she has only about a year and a half to cram in two and a half years of study. If, instead, Missy were the one who is an "A student, in six activities, on two teams and planning to be a doctor," instead of Claire (which makes sense since she is much more driven and Claire is more of a follower), then it would be believable that she could finish up high school a year early and join the others in college at the same time.
Too much — The reference to the Wall Street Journal article mentioning the black swans should have only been used once, by the Ned character. Its use by Missy's father seems to be unneeded.
Plot — Neglecting to mention Genevieve until page 73, and then going on for about 15 pages without connecting her back to the original story is disconcerting. I closed the book three times. I looked at the page numbers, thinking that the book was misprinted and something was out of place. Actually, the author was trying to bring in a surprise, but it was too much of a break in the story. Genevieve, and her relationship to her non-involved parents could have been brought in early, along with descriptions of the other parents and their relationship with their daughters. By introducing the characters early, there is no large break in the storyline when you bring them back in, much later. However, there would also not have been such a great surprise when the storylines reconnected. But then, the title has already given it away.
All in all, I really liked the book. If you are going to read it, pay attention to the datelines, the days and places in bold at the beginning of some of the sections. I have already read it five times in the last week. But then, I have read four other books in the last couple of days — none of which were as good as "Three Black Swans."
Read well,
Logan
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