(199) Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

This week belongs to Picoult books. I have been reading quite a few of them: Vanishing Acts, The Pact, Perfect Match and Salem Falls. Each of these involved sexual abuse or assault of minors. Each book is different.

In Vanishing Acts she dealt with multiple issues: kidnapping, stealing identities, alcoholism, and child abuse as well as neglect. While reading this, I think of a Klang mother who lost her son on his first day of school. It was unthinkable for her son to be claimed by a woman with dark glasses in plain sight of a teacher on duty in the waiting area after school. Until today, the boy was not found. A few years ago, a reporter interviewed the family on the boy's birthday and found the family keeping a place for the missing child at the dinner table. Actually, a relative who visited Southern Thailand claimed he saw the boy begging by the way side, but by the time the parents rushed there he was nowhere to be seen. It is not unusual for such a child to be maimed and used for earning money by crooks.

A few weeks ago, a boy called William walked out of his family car one evening and vanished. A huge man hunt was mounted, much money was offered for clues to recovering him. Sad to say, his body was found about a week later in the river. Many people commented on face book, much of it was sympathetic and some filled with anger. The shocking part was the bereaved mom chose to read those messages and was so upset that she made a  public apology to the Chinese media. It was perhaps a not very wise decision to leave three children locked in a car while both parents went to see washing machines in an electrical appliance shop. The story went into a twist when the autopsy found some old wounds in the skull and some smart reporters unearthed a report of physical abuse by the father a few months back. A further high point was having clips of the grandmother turning up at the cremation wailing as she had not met up with William, whom she brought up, for a long six months.

I suppose no mothers who love their children deserve to lose them, whether in not taking leave to be in the sending and the picking up of the child on his first day of school; or in desiring to be alone with her husband to find the dream washing machine! But I firmly agree with Delia (the central character in Vanishing Acts) that if her birth mother chose to be blind to the sexual abuse carried out by her boy friend and later second husband, then she deserved to be alone and could not expect visitations from her only living daughter and little grand daughter.