The Deep End Of The Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

The Deep End Of The Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

The Deep End Of The Ocean starts off as a fast paced emotional roller coaster ride then mid way through the book changes gear into a story about family and how even people living in the same house as one another can become almost total strangers to one another. I think that this is something that a lot of people can relate to especially in today’s often strange and crazy world. We may share a house or even blood with a person but does that mean we really know them and what goes on in their heads? I think a lot of the time the answer to that question is no.

The central theme of this book by Jacquelyn Mitchard is the kidnapping of Ben Cappadora, a three-year-old boy from the lobby of a busy hotel. For me however the main theme that seemed to run through this book was about finding yourself and finding your true identity. All of the main characters in this book changed greatly throughout the story coming out at the end as not necessarily different people but perhaps as wiser people who had learnt a great deal about themselves and the people around them. People that over time they had taken for granted and had just assumed would be there to guide them along the right path in life. It took an enormous tragedy like the kidnapping of Ben Cappadora to make the main protagonists in this story realise that their lives were perhaps not as perfect as they made out. I am not entirely sure that this voyage of discovery made them better people but perhaps it opened their eyes a little to what was going on around them. Things that they were often too blinkered or to consumed with other things to notice.

The first part of this book dealing with the kidnapping of Ben Cappadora at the school reunion was extremely face paced and tense. I felt like I was watching a tense thriller on the television as the drama, Jacquelyn Mitchard, so carefully built up in those early chapters had me quite literally on the edge of my seat. There were times when I could not turn the pages fast enough. The constant reminders of how much time had passed since his disappearance made me as a reader feel like I was there at the scene watching the tragic events unfold. I often felt like I was a fly on the wall of the hotel watching the police come and go and Beth’s life fall apart right in front of her.

It seems impossible to believe that a boy or any child for that matter could literally vanish into thin air in what was a packed area full of people who were meant to be friends and acquaintances. Maybe in truth though this was the perfect setting for a kidnapping to take place. All those people milling around, no one really paying any attention. To lead a child out of the lobby in all that chaos would not really look out of place or strange to on lookers, just an every day event.

In this case though that every day event turned the lives of Beth and Pat Cappadora upside down and inside out. Time of course is crucial in the finding of a child once they have been kidnapped, the first hour being the most important. After the first hour of a kidnapping it becomes more likely that the child will not be found alive. Beth kept informing the reader of how much time had gone by since Ben had been snatched and how as the minutes became hours the chances of finding him were slipping by. I think once it became clear that Ben was not just playing a game of hide and seek and that he really was missing the readers mind took over and started to imagine all sorts of terrible things.

I for one was convinced for some time that Vincent, the older brother, had something to do with Ben’s disappearance. Although I did not think he had been left alone long enough to harm Ben I was not totally sure that he was not to blame for what had transpired. Obviously I was wrong with my theories but with more and more horrific events being linked to children these days it seemed a great possibility that Vincent was somehow involved. His behaviour suggested that he was guilty of something and in truth he was – of letting Ben get snatched. Vincent could not however take the blame for that, if anyone was to blame then that was his mother for leaving Vincent, who was only a young child himself, to look after Ben whilst she booked herself in at the hotel. Sadly apportioning blame and hindsight doesn’t bring a kidnapped child back safe and sound.

Throughout the book there were the obvious elements of blame thrown around. If Beth hadn’t taken the children to the reunion then there would have been no opportunity for Ben to be kidnapped. If Vincent had not let go of Ben then maybe he wouldn’t have been taken. Pat even suggested that Beth was not a good mother and that she had brought the whole thing on herself and the family. I guess in a situation like this one it is easy to throw blame around whether it is done intentionally or just done in the heat of the moment because of all the raw emotion is another thing. Sadly once words are spoken no matter how true or heart felt they are they do stick and they do resonate in a persons mind.

Right up until the end of this story Vincent believes he is to blame for Ben’s disappearance. He harbours his guilt and it eats away at him turning him into a rebel and anti-social person. He was the one who was charged with looking after Ben in the hotel lobby, he was the one who was told to hold his hand and not let go. In many ways the main thing that angered me about this story and I am sure that this is true of many situations like this one, is that Vincent was never really spoken to by his family about what happened. The focus of Beth and Pat was naturally on finding Ben but at what cost to their other children. Vincent particularly not only lost his brother but for a considerable length of time he lost his parents as well. Vincent felt guilty for allowing Ben to be taken. He admitted later in the book that he had let go of Ben’s hand and had even wished he would go away, which in Vincent’s eyes was exactly what had happened and for that he felt he was to blame. Although when Vincent started to become a wayward child he was packed off to a therapist no one really close to him – Beth or Pat seemed inclined to sit and chat to him and to really find out what was going on with him. Were they so blinkered by other events not to realise that the loss of Ben and even his subsequent return to the family were all tied up in Vincent’s slide into unruly behaviour. He was not upset that Ben had returned home and he was not craving attention that he felt he was missing (which is what Pat and Beth seemed to believe), he was just expressing in his own way his feelings of guilt and remorse. How could he be a brother to Ben and care about him when he blamed himself for all the suffering Ben had experienced in his life? There were many cases where Vincent said that it appeared that his mother looked straight through him, not really seeing him at all. He also offered the suggestion on more than one occasion in the book that Ben had been the apple of his mother’s eye and loosing him meant she hated Vincent. I think Vincent’s mind was a little distorted by all the guilt he was carrying around with him – like a heavy rock around his neck. I think it would be hard to show your surviving children love when you were consumed with fear and panic over your missing child. How could you act normally around your surviving children when one of your children was gone and you were wondering if they were dead or being mistreated? It would be hard to carry on any sort of normal life. Beth and Pat had the added trauma of having no closure on events for many years. If a body had been found then at least they could have put the matter to rest once and for all. Pat accused Beth of giving up on Ben – saying she would rather he be dead. Beth said she wasn’t giving up on Ben just facing the cold hard facts that after all that time it was highly unlikely that he would be found alive and well.

I think Jacquelyn Mitchard highlighted very realistically in this story how brothers and sisters of kidnap or even of murder victims often suffer more than the parents of these victims. They loose not only the person who was lost or murdered but in many ways their parents as well. In this story for example Pat and Beth were so absorbed in finding Ben that they spent little time with the remaining children, leaving them with family and friends all of the time. They never appeared to sit down with the children and explain or discuss what was going on or how they were all feeling about the situation. Their whole lives became about Ben. When Ben returned to the family things were even more difficult. Ben now Sam was a stranger in his own home. He remembered very little of his time before he was kidnapped and acted like a visitor rather than a member of the family. Beth and Pat found themselves walking on egg shells trying to make Ben/Sam feel like he was part of the family and that he was loved and wanted. Yet again the other children were pushed aside and chastised if they did anything, which could tip the scales in the wrong direction. In truth it is no wonder that Vincent went off the rails. He felt he was to blame for the initial incident, he felt unloved by his family especially his mother (again he thought this was because she thought him to blame for Ben’s disappearance) and on Ben/Sam’s return he felt almost pushed out of his own family. No matter how hard he tried it was never going to be good enough.

There were I felt a lot of holes in the police investigation, which came to light when it was discovered that Ben, now called Sam, was living just a few blocks away from his family and had been there for years without anyone suspecting a thing. Later when it came to light that one of the people at the reunion had snatched Ben and that her fingerprints had been on file it did seem that there were a lot of gaps in the police investigation. How could a guest at the reunion and someone Beth knew take Ben and make him into her own son? Maybe if things had been handled differently Ben would have been found a lot sooner than he was saving the family so much heartbreak and grief. I think that Jacquelyn Mitchard really stuck the knife into the reader’s heart when she told us that all along Ben had been living just around the corner and even went to the same school as Kerry. Worse still that Kerry knew Ben as Sam and that Vincent had seem the kid around and thought he looked a little like Ben but was afraid to say anything in case it opened up a new can of worms for him and the family. How cruel to find out that your missing child, missing for years, was only a short distance away from you all of the time, growing up as another families son.

The story for me took an even more emotional turn when Ben/Sam was brought back to live with Beth and Pat. There you had a boy who for years had been growing up as the son of another couple and was quite happy then all of a sudden his world as he knew it was ripped right out from under him. Suddenly he was thrown into a new world with people be could not remember, people who wanted him to act in a certain way and expected certain things of him.

I think Jacquelyn Mitchard devised quite an interesting storyline regarding the set up of the family who had taken Ben/Sam in. Firstly there was Cecilia who had taken Ben from the hotel lobby and was bringing him up as her own child. It was hard to hate her or feel anger towards her when we as the reader found out that she was mentally sick and had been for years. She could not be punished for her crimes as she was already being punished enough living in a mental institution and being hardly able to communicate with the outside world. She may have been wrong to take Ben but she didn’t do it out of malice she was just a mentally unstable lady whose boundaries between right and wrong had got blurred somewhere along the way. Of course we as the reader would never truly know if Cecilia was mentally unstable when she took Ben at the reunion. We later found out that Cecilia had a baby and that it died – was this event what triggered Cecilia’s kidnapping of Ben. Was she replacing her dead child with Ben?

When Candy interviewed Cecilia’s mother it became apparent that she had her doubts about her daughters story as to where Ben came from and that she knew that her daughter had been pregnant but had lost the child. She explained to Candy and Beth that Cecilia was unstable even back then and that she took the story about the loss of the baby to be a lie or at least a fabrication of the real truth. For me as a reader of the story I did wonder how Cecilia had been overlooked as a suspect in the kidnapping but then again there wasn’t really any reason to think that she could be involved. She had no motive; she was just a girl Beth once knew at school. Cecilia would never go to jail for her crimes – perhaps she was just as innocent as Ben in many ways? Did she take the child because she desperately wanted a child and her own had died? Did she really not know any better? Jacquelyn Mitchard cleverly left a lot of questions unanswered regarding Cecilia and why she stole Ben. It was saddening in a way to hear Ben/Sam talk about his mother and to say that he loved her and still thought of her as his real mother. Even after he discovered what she had done he did not seem to hate her or be angry with her.
When Ben/Sam is found he is living very happily with George his stepfather. He is happy, well treated and loved. It is a really tearful moment when Ben/Sam is forced to go and live back with his real parents, as it is obvious he wants to stay with George and George doesn’t want to give him up. After all George is just as much an innocent in this story as Ben/Sam and Pat and Beth. He didn’t know that Cecilia had stolen the child, when he married her she already had the child and told him he was from her previous marriage. George never questioned this and why should he? When Cecilia became ill George had continued to raise Ben/Sam as his own. He didn’t care that he was another man’s child. Later in the book when we find out that Ben/Sam has been sneaking back to George’s at night to sleep we get to see the full extent of the love the two share and how hard it is for the two of them to be apart. Ben/Sam thinks of George as his dad and finds it hard to think of him as anything else or for that matter to see Beth and Pat as his parents. I think Beth makes the right move later on in the story when she consents to Ben/Sam going to live with George. It would be a really hard decision to make and one that Jacquelyn Mitchard points out to the reader could cost her her marriage but at the end of the day it seems the right and proper decision to make under the circumstances. I can understand why a lot of people would be up in arms over Beth’s choice to let George and Ben/Sam be together but for the sake of her child it seems the only right thing she can do. Forcing Ben/Sam to live with a family he barely knows after growing up in a happy home for years could have done more to damage their long term relationship that allowing him to go back to his ‘real’ home and be with his father, the only father he has ever known. I would not envy anyone making that choice but it seemed the correct thing to do after looking at the story from both sides of the coin.

Pat is evidentially angry with Beth for allowing George to take care of Ben/Sam and blames her for caving in to Ben/Sam’s whims. I can see Pat’s point of view – he has just got his long lost son back and then he is taken from him once again to live with a stranger. Pat I think is a bit blinkered – he only sees things for his perspective. He doesn’t appear to consider Ben/Sam’s feelings or for that matter those of his wife. In many respects I don’t believe that Pat ever forgave Beth for letting Ben get taken in the first place. He still harboured a grudge towards her but this grudge was buried under the surface while they were busy searching for Ben. On Ben’s return home and subsequent return to his ‘other’ home all those feelings towards his wife resurface maybe not consciously but sub-consciously at least.

For me one thing that Jacquelyn Mitchard does well in this book is that she lifts the spirit of the reader on one page but swiftly brings the reader back down to earth with a huge bump on the next. Ben is kidnapped, then there are reports of sightings to get the readers hopes up. These sightings are not Ben so the search goes on bringing the reader back down once again. As time goes by you as the reader start to give up hope of finding Ben alive. It has been too long for him to be found healthy or alive. Suddenly the mood of the book changes when Beth is greeted with a kid who looks like Ben on her own doorstep asking if he can do some odd jobs around the house. Could it really be Ben after all this time? In many ways it seems too good to be true, but perhaps this is the cruellest twist in the tail yet. I think this particular twist of fate is what makes the story so great. The reader is then in a rush to read the next few pages of the book to find out if a miracle has happened and Ben Cappadora is really alive and well. Sadly even when we find out that it is Ben we are not left with a happy ever after feeling. We learn that Ben now called Sam has been living a good life with new parents. He doesn’t want to leave his family to be with a family he doesn’t know and in truth who can blame him? We have the sadness when Ben/Sam is forced to go back home and we see how distant he is and how he is there in body but not in spirit. The reader is then subjected to more raw emotion when it is decided that he can go home and live back with George. At the end of the book however there does appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel when Ben/Sam returns home with his bags and says to Vincent that he is ready to come home.

Jacquelyn Mitchard cleverly leaves a lot of questions about what the future holds for the family unanswered. It is nice in a way that Jacquelyn Mitchard has avoided giving the book a traditional happy ending or a nicely polished ending that rounds everything off leaving no stray ends to be concluded. In the real world there are very few happy endings or questions that do not need answering and I think that Jacquelyn Mitchard has been consistent throughout this book keeping it very realistic and true to life. Although there have been happy parts in this book they have always been tinged with sadness. When somebody wins another person looses and I think that is an important point in this book, which is glued together with a lot of intense emotion.

Although it was easy to feel empathy for Beth and Pat and the awful situation they found themselves in I didn’t find them particularly likeable characters. Beth seemed very self-centred even before Ben disappeared. I did wonder how Pat and Beth had stayed married for so long as it appeared that neither of them liked one another that much. Of course it is possible that the cracks only became evident in their marriage after Ben disappeared. Maybe his kidnap brought their troubles to the surface more and made them more apparent.

I liked the character of Vincent and found him very interesting to read about throughout the story. His decline from a slightly troubled boy into a teenage menace made for very powerful reading. It was understandable how his behaviour plummeted over the years. I found it very easy to emphasise with Vincent and the situation he found himself in. His situation was not an enviable one. He found himself in a very strange situation that most of us couldn’t even imagine let alone live through. The trauma he experienced due to the loss of his brother obviously played heavily on his mind. He blamed himself for starters for what had happened to Ben. When Ben/Sam returned he found himself even more consumed with guilt over what had happened. It was not until the end of the story that he was finally able to unburden himself and tell Ben/Sam that he felt responsible for the kidnapping although in truth he had nothing to feel guilty for. He was just a young child himself when the kidnap took place there was no way he could have foreseen events or prevented what had happened.

Once again I am drawn back to the way Pat and Beth handled the situation and aided their remaining children in coming to terms with events. I believe that if they had handled the situation much better then just maybe Vincent would not have gone off of the rails as he did. He wasn’t a bad boy he just used his temper and bad behaviour as a cry for help. It struck me as odd that it was really only Tom that could see what he was doing and why. Vincent found it hard to connect with people probably because he was afraid that if he got too close to them they might leave like Ben. Tom was Vincent’s only real friend throughout the book and the only one who really seemed to listen to his troubles. I know he was paid to listen to Vincent and his problems but at least he genuinely seemed to care about the child. It was sad in a way that the only person Vincent felt that he was able to turn to and talk to was being paid for his services. I felt throughout the book that Vincent was let down by both of his parents.

I think Vincent changed his name to Reece so that he could escape his past and what had happened to Ben. He had spent much of his younger life in the spotlight as a result of all the press attention over the case. Even years later the family were still the centre of attention with everything that happened to them front page news. Sadly although he changed his name he couldn’t escape the cold hard truth of what had happened that day in the hotel lobby. It would be with him forever. When Ben returned to the family home I think Vincent/Reece acted so strangely and awkwardly towards him because of his guilt over the kidnapping. He still felt bad and to blame but he wasn’t brave enough at that point to confront his true feelings so he used anger instead. I think in truth he was happy to have his brother back but he didn’t know how to treat him or act around him as he felt that if he hadn’t let go of his hand all those years a go they wouldn’t be in the mess they were in now with Ben/Sam not knowing them and wanting to return to his ‘real’ family.

The real break though was when Vincent/Reece got arrested for driving drunk in the coach’s car. I think that was the wake up call that Vincent/Reece needed. Ben/Sam still felt something towards his brother and was trying hard to find some sort of connection between them even after he had returned home to George. Going to the jail and seeing Vincent/Reece battered and bruised mentally and physically made him push even harder to make a break through with his brother and finally it worked. The most touching moment of that scene was when Vincent/Reece told Ben/Sam that he could carry on calling him Vincent if he wanted to. This showed a softer side to Vincent/Reece and showed that underneath his tough exterior he wasn’t really all that tough. I think before that incident Vincent/Reece was afraid to let Ben/Sam back into his life in case he went away again.

If Ben/Sam had not returned home at the end of the story I would have been sure that Beth and Pat would split up and go their separate ways. With Ben/Sam’s return home I think they would try and make a go of things more perhaps for the sake of Ben/Sam than themselves. If Ben/Sam ever left again then I think they would split up for sure.

Throughout the book it is obvious that Beth feels like her life is lacking something. She makes many references to Nick and the relationship they had in High School. It is clear that she still has feelings for him and maybe if things were not so complicated she would act on those feelings. When Ben was missing she did sleep with Nick and never showed any signs of remorse for her actions. The second time they met up they almost had sex but Beth pushed him away and went home to Pat – who she did end up having rather passionate sex with. I think she did feel guilty on that occasion and wanted to prove to herself that she still loved Pat and could make things work between them. Once she got Nick out of her head the sex was good but I don’t think it proved anything. Pat still seemed very cold towards her like he couldn’t love her anymore. I think after all that had happened Pat and Beth had just drifted apart. Maybe if it hadn’t been for the kidnapping they would have broken up and divorced long before. Beth would never get together with Nick though as he had a wife and although he admitted straying occasionally he did say he loved her and his life with her. Nick was more of a fantasy than a long-term relationship prospect. In her hour of need he just reminded her of a time before all the bad things happened – when she was still young, single and had no baggage to carry around. In one chapter Beth actually contemplated whether Cecilia was in fact a better mother to Ben than she would have been.

I liked the way Jacquelyn Mitchard mixed up the chapters in the book having some as if narrated by Beth and others as if narrated by Vincent/Reece. It was interesting particularly as I felt that the named chapters gave us as readers a real insight into the character and what he or she was thinking and feeling at that time. Beth for me seemed a really closed off person who was unable to show her emotions freely. When Ben was kidnapped she seemed very distant and remote. I thought at first that this was just her reacting to the event and her way of coping with the trauma that was unfolding before her but as I continued to read on through the book I became aware that Beth was like this all of the time. Maybe this is why Jacquelyn Mitchard made the character of Beth into a photographer – a fitting profession for someone with Beth’s characteristics. Beth can hide behind her camera and use it as a shield to block out the real world. Beth describes the horrors and delights she has photographed over the years and comments all the time on how she has seen some really bad things but never thought they would happen to her or that she would be the one being photographed going through those things. It is obvious that Beth is far happier being behind the camera than in front of it. Maybe if Beth were more honest and open with Pat regarding her feelings about Ben and their marriage things would not be so bad between them. She lets things fester rather than deal with them head on. Her personality – being so closed off and almost introvert have alienated Vincent to the point where he feels she doesn’t love him anyone. He is a blot on her landscape nothing more. She doesn’t engage in conversation with him and she shows little interest in his life. When Candy mentions his therapy sessions towards the end of the story Beth replies that she has no idea how they are going she has never felt the need to find out. I think she shocks herself a little bit when she admits that to Candy. She suddenly realises just how distant she has become from her family. Maybe that is another reason why she wonders if Cecilia was a better mother than her and why she is so compliant with Ben/Sam’s demands to go back home to George. She has made a mess of her relationship with Vincent and even her marriage to Pat – by sending Ben/Sam away she wont be able to make the same mistakes again and mess his life up.

The chapters narrated as if by Vincent/Reece were really helpful in gaining an understanding of what was really going on in his head. Vincent/Reece was painted as a bad boy throughout the book it wasn’t until you really analysed his character and pulled it apart that you could see the real Vincent/Reece and understand why he was like he was. I think that Vincent/Reece and Beth Cappadora were more alike than they thought. Vincent held his feelings in expressing them as anger and a bad temper. Beth held her emotions in so much that she became shut off from the rest of the family. Early on when Ben was kidnapped for example she spent much of her time in bed. Getting up when it was a necessity then going straight back to bed. She locked herself away from the world and from those who loved her in much the same way as Vincent/Reece struck out and got himself into trouble.

Throughout the book Beth does seem to share a special affinity with Candy the detective assigned to Ben’s case. I think Beth finds it easier to talk to Candy about things because Candy is impartial. Candy is as much Beth’s therapist as Tom is to Vincent. Beth knows that Candy won’t judge her or blame her for her choices and actions unlike Pat. Candy is on the outside looking in. Although she becomes quite heavily involved with the family as a whole and the case she is still more of an on looker who can give impartial advice and guidance to Beth. I think in some ways Candy became a bit too involved with the family and that perhaps professionalism went out the window because of her feelings towards Beth and Pat. At the end when Ben was discovered Candy was very hard on herself for not finding him sooner and for not realising that he was just round the corner from the home of the Cappadora’s. There may well have been gaps in the case and things that were over looked but all in all I don’t believe Candy was to blame for the delay in finding Ben. I liked Candy and found her personality refreshing. Although the mood throughout a lot of the book was sombre Candy was always fresh and honest. She didn’t beat around the bush and she always said exactly what she thought. In many ways working the Cappadora case was hard on Candy as she herself wanted a child but had been unsuccessful. As the story unfolded it was nice to find out more about Candy and her personal life this distracted the reader for just a second from the real story and the heavy drama that was unfolding over the page.

Overall The Deep End Of The Ocean was a really interesting and emotional read. I loved the first part of the book that was extremely face paced and full of action. The second part of the book threw up a lot of questions about people and emotions. It also was a real eye opener into what people think and feel, the things they don’t say as well as the things they do. The book left the reader with a lot to ponder over and it also left the reader with a lot of questions unanswered. For me as a reader I was left wondering how I would firstly handle the situation of having my child taken and then how I would feel if that child was returned to me years later. Would I be able to love that child as I had when he or she was first born or would I see that child as a total stranger? Would I like Beth have been able to allow the child to return to it’s ‘new’ home rather than force him or her to stay in a home that was unfamiliar and unsettling?