Defending Jacob
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Could have been Better
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Heather,I agree with you! I've been hearing more about this book recently, and I keep wondering what people are seeing in it! My problem, even more than the story was the way that it was written! When I read a book, I want to feel something about the characters. Do I side with them? Against them? Would they be my friends?
In this book, I found myself not caring about the characters. By the end, I just kind of felt that I didn't really care who lived or died, who was convicted or acquitted.
Heather, I do agree about the book but I think your post may contain some spoiler-type stuff. Maybe you should think about marking it with a spoiler designation? I'm a little paranoid, too, about that having had a couple of books spoiled for me, so keep that in mind. Anyway, don't mean any offense... :)
The blurb grabbed my attention and the first few chapters I thought were great. After that, I thought the book kind of dragged until after Jacob's trail when they went on vacation and all the other stuff happened. I'm happy to see some other people were less that impressed with this book. BUT THAT ENDING? SO FRUSTRATING.
Heather, your fifth paragraph should have a spoiler designation. One thing great about this book is that the vast majority of the readers have kept quiet about the ending, so it came a shock to me and to many others. Most people reading your post have probably read all the book, but there are always a few...
Do not read this if you have not read the entire book. Spoilers without warning are nasty.I could not disagree more with Heather, and I am a parent of 3 adults and close friends of parents with a personality disordered adult daughter.
That's exactly how you "realize" when someone you love and have that deep love/ lifetime connection to/with (child and parent)is beyond the scope of normal behavior.
This book was excellent. Even within the pace and the writing of the "reveal" and the conclusion. Life within family core with these heavy psychological personality disorders is not reality tv or a sit com. or cop show when all is obvious and concluded within the hour.
You truly do not "see" when you have eyes of love until you have to "see". And sometimes not even then.
The mother was a saint to take the side of society as she did.
It is extremely difficult to accept this kind of reality for someone you love. More difficult that a death, it would be like negating half of yourself.
You have to be rather young and not understanding of most of the cognitive or emotional bonds of a parent to overlook the crux of this book as some posting here have absolutely done.
This book seems to have been almost entirely misunderstood by those of little understanding of what depths parents have for their children. And also the ending completely misunderstood. She loved him enough to stop the wrong. Not frustrating at all, but selflessly pure heroism. She gave herself, exactly like a soldier who falls on the grenade to save most of his platoon.
It would not have been a better life for her son ahead. Not under any circumstances. Some humans are not fixable.
Jeanette wrote: "Do not read this if you have not read the entire book. Spoilers without warning are nasty.I could not disagree more with Heather, and I am a parent of 3 adults and close friends of parents with a..."
Agree 100%! I have a son who developed severe depression while in college. He wouldn't talk to anyone and I feared for his and other's safety. Fortunately, he got better. His depression did not put others in danger. However, many of the mass shooters have depression, or are bipolar, or have some other mental issue that goes untreated. Parents can't legally have any input into their adult child's medical issues, based on HIPAA laws in the US. They can't force their children to take their meds. They can't have them institutionalized for their safety. The police can't do anything until a crime is committed.
In this book, the child is not yet an adult. His parents should tried to get help for Jacob. However, his father was in denial. There isn't much the mother could do if the father was not on board, since the child would play one parent against the other. (My son tried that with us.) Jacob wasn't convicted of a crime, so there isn't much the medical community can do EVEN IF IT WAS positive Jacob had committed two murders. The mother did what she thought was necessary to prevent future deaths.
Yes, Emily. You've got the picture. And it isn't just the USA either. Some humans have conditions which are not fixable, they can only be guarded or fixed "in place" after being caught (think Hannibal Lector's set up in body restraints). Or they face a lifetime of dealing horrific horror on others in society and do it with charm (Ted Bundy or Jeffry Dahlmer) and go on for decades without getting caught. As a Mother, how could you live with knowing that?
This Mother knew. She knew and she faced what she knew. What strength that took! And what a gift she gave to her society to end this mayhem upon others.
Denial is much more common than facing anything like this, for a parent it is. No time more than now when so many parents are such "friends" with their kids too and do not take an active authority role after a certain age. Especially to a condition as void of conscience as this son's, and yet with such social skills attached to it at the same time (as he DID have). Beyond dangerous! People like that have killed hundreds, literally a thousand in a couple of cases- before anyone could see behind the smiling mask. Do some research and you'd be shocked.
Apologies to anyone who thought or felt that there was a 'spoiler' issue here--these threads are not reviews but discussions for the book and the title was 'Could have been better'. I did a formal review elsewhere; this was for folks who'd read it.If I'm looking for a simple review I wouldn't delve into myriad threads of those that had read the book and were discussing/arguing over it--for that would clearly lead to some kind of accidental disclosure.
(However to be painstaking in the future I’ll include a safety advisory…)
And while it's great Jeannette that you enjoyed the book so much ; be aware that not everyone thinks making excuses is the best option.Clearly you have bias/one track mind with such supercilious statements as:
"You have to be rather young and not understanding of most of the cognitive or emotional bonds of a parent to overlook the crux of this book as some posting here have absolutely done."
Just cause not everyone *agrees* with you about ONE BOOK; doesn't mean they are 'young' or lack any understanding--it means they don't agree with you and you are *not* the end all be all for the world on this book-- or on parenting.
I stand by my comments and reject the notion that making excuses is the best way to parent. The parents could have done better and making excuses--in my opinion-- is pitiful. Thank you.
To the notion of parental blindness and how difficult it would have been to address… --While of course it would be monumentally difficult to deal with/address—other parents have done it.
There IS the possibility that they could have intervened with their son’s mental health—there is that POSSIBILITY yes?
Therefore once knowing about the evil he did—TORTURING innocent animals and killing the boy—they could have PREVENTED the MURDER of the girl.
Making excuses for them oh they loved him too much or blah blah blah—doesn’t help the parents of the murdered girl much does it?
No one is saying it would be *easy*--it would not.
But not trying at all is beyond inexcusable. Real parental love should extend past oneself and do the best to help your offspring and for certain protect the offspring of others.
Making excuses is not good parenting.
Not by a long shot.
--And to those praising the mother...I don't disagree with you--what she did was a sacrifice of the highest order.But my *point* was--it was because of the failure of *both* parents that she was even in that position.
And because of that failure an innocent girl is *dead*...
What about her parents?
Maybe we take a moment to think about them.
Heather, you assume that by going to a doctor with "proof" and that being on the same page (parents with each other) and not in any denial- the two parents could have prevented the little girl's murder.And that by having Jacob in therapy and on meds would have stopped that from happening on that beach outing.
Believe me, sadly, that is not true. None of that has basis in reality. A sociopath of this type is not fixable. Thousands, not hundreds of such people commit murder again and again. Even on meds, in prisons and under guard. That's the reality. Especially now that a person's "rights" prevents them from being kept in institutions as they once were under lock down against their wills, we rarely even know where they can move to or choose to live, anymore.
And you once again go on to explain some idealist judgment of parenting definitions. Which are NOT what this is about at all.And have little to do with actual parents' interactions when their offspring commit felonies. And it does not account for any true human (homo sapiens)psychology either.
You probably are not a parent and have no idea of the cognitive association of a parent. You can "see" but not "see. It is absolutely true. Some parents cannot even separate their children's failures from their own.
This is not about idealist parenting. It is what actually happens when parents see and "know". And that outcome you suggest, that would never happen after just one other murder that they didn't even witness themselves. Not with Jacob's charm and his answers to them being what they were.
So that little girl was most likely doomed regardless. It is exactly because of thinking about her, and her parents that I say this book is so important. And it is NOT a basis for judgmental conclusion about her father or her mother not confronting the kid.
Confrontation does not fix this. DSM-V says it is what it is. And makes no pretensions about a better conclusion after confrontation. Not at all.
With our present system of Criminal Social Justice and Psychiatric care, Jacob very well might have been 500 times more lethal than just 2 or 3 people.
His mother DID think about them. The Father confronting Jacob might have made a longer storyline or "in house" psychiatric outcome- but it would not aid that little's girls parents. In fact, they might have been joined by 150 more parents of such loss.
These parents did not fail. There is no room for such judgment in this story. In fact, they suffered almost more than the victims who lost their physical lives.
Jacob was what he was. They did not make him that way. And they, not in any scenario, could they have changed some dire Jacob outcomes upon other innocents.
Personality Disorders and terrible states do happen- people are born without souls. You cannot blame their parents. Blame is entirely Jacob's.
His society does not have the brakes for these people yet. Maybe it never will.
You keep using the language of "failure". His parents did not fail.
And attacking me? That's juvenile. Really, it is.That's coming from a place of anger. Which has nothing to do with me, nor with the book or this question of Jacob's parents culpability.
Jacob was the murderer and was missing a soul and a conscience.
They were not.
No one "attacked" you. Pointing out that some of your comments were supercilious and over the top is not an "attack".I hope you understand the difference.
Those points I made are not supercilious. They are essential to the crux of your original judgment post. And of your assumptions to the parental understanding to "seeing" guilt and then reacting to what they "know". And reread what you type, because you do NOT know the difference between a personal attack and posting an objection to saying someone's assumptions and definitions are just wrong. As some of yours are in this case.
" Just cause not everyone *agrees* with you about ONE BOOK; doesn't mean they are 'young' or lack any understanding--it means they don't agree with you and you are *not* the end all be all for the world on this book-- or on parenting." quote from Heather.
That is a personal attack, Heather.
No, I am not the end all for parenting. But I am a parent and also a clinical psychologist. You do not understand the "fault" of this "failure" in this book. And you are making assumptions about parenting that are vast generalizations and do not apply at all in this case, either. Your words used are failure and excuses?
Which, once again, is not what an entity like Jacob and his psychological condition encompasses.
We are not making "excuses" for the parents, because we understand that they are seeing through parental eyes. It's like trying to see through a darkened shade of love. You do not "see" because it is not comprehensible for your own psyche to see. They actually may never be able to have true cognition of such a deep and horrid cycle of behaviors.
They may not be able to even "try" to see, either. His Mother was exceptional. Not if they can not acknowledge this horrid reality, as it is, IS real. His Father may have so much of himself enmeshed within his son and their relationship that acknowledgment might mean his own sanity.
It is far, far more complicated- the psychology of the sociopath. And nearly impossible for parents of such conditions.
They do not need any more blame on top of it.
Wow. You do have issues and a lack of ability to see this clearly. "Those points I made are not supercilious. They are essential to the crux of your original judgment post."
So what makes YOU right, and me suddenly wrong? Can you hear yourself?
YOUR points are "essential"! Wow, must be nice!
MY points are just plain wrong then?
Wow.
And my refuting your supercilious points is the OPPOSITE of an 'attack' it's simply refuting the points--do you honestly not know the difference?
I'm done after this. Go on arguing with yourself.Because YOUR opinion is just not correct in view of the current knowledge within Cognitive Psychology. You just cannot make the assumptions you continue to make upon judging those parents' reactions to their reality.
Reread your original post of May 28. The "disappoint" is centered upon your own misunderstanding of these parents perceptions and abilities to react, from the get-go.
And this is an essential crux of your continual posts. The points made beyond your defensive reactions to why you are wrong.
Take a couple of classes in Pathopsychology if you have a chance.
Then maybe you can get beyond the disappointment and the wows.
Wow. :) You know we're talking about a BOOK right...?The fact that you think you're the center of the Universe and that only you know what's right and true--is as astonishing as it is frightening.
All you do is make pathetic excuses and throw your hands in the air and say there's no hope.
But you want to pretend you're the rational one?
That's rich.
Take your pathetic, pitiful excuses & helplessness and keep telling yourself how 'right' you are--over and over, rocking yourself to sleep.
Be well.
@jEAN--"And that by having Jacob in therapy and on meds would have stopped that from happening on that beach outing. Believe me, sadly, that is not true. None of that has basis in reality.”
Really? There was *no way* prevent it. None?
There was physically and scientifically no way to prevent them from going on vacation?
Clearly you’re the one who has no ‘basis in reality’.
Again, instead of running off on a family vacay—lollygagging on the beach and leaving your psychotic son to his own devices; instead of that—they could have—scientifically speaking it’s possible; they could have stayed home and put their son in treatment, in an institution, frankly there are dozens of things they COULD have done rather than jet off to the beach and leave him unsupervised to kill again.But you seem to want to fret about, and do nothing but make pathetic excuses to how there was ‘no way’ to prevent him from killing that girl.
I’m here to tell you –there was.
There’s always a way to do more—and making excuses [for being weak, blind and lazy] is pitiful.
That girl had a family—and they deserve more than your weak, helpless platitudes.
Don’t they?
--
On your profile you use the word “Desparate”—you do realize that you misspelled the word ‘desperate’ don’t you? On your profile…? Yeah.So mind if we don’t take your all-important opinions as gospel on this book or on any other topic. Thanks.
{Apologies, *that* was personal...}
I wasn't 100% convinced he WAS guilty. I kept switching sides the whole book. I think that is the authors intention to keep you flip flopping. During the trial they didn't have any FIRM evidence and on vacation they never said it was BLOOD on his shorts. The author always implied but never actually said. I do agree the kid has issues, but I kept saying it COULD be coincidence lol.
Jen--in my book club some were sure, some weren't. ONe member said after the discusion she was now sure he was guilty. Others said they knew when HOpe died. I mean coinicidence that she dies...? Yes, the trial --we'll never know since it never finished...
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The book grabbed me and kept me in; I'm reading it for book club and finished it over long weekend and was happy to be reading it.
What a colossal disappoint at the end! Why not show the parents confronting their evil monster of a son?! The dad knows he buried a DOG ALIVE and does nothing? Really?
They vacation and celebrate the monster-child and never once think to create a session with that doctor and try and do something positive, smart or forward thinking?
The slap dash car wreck/murder ending was too pat and left too many questions.
Why put us through the whining self dialogue of the dad and then not have him *confront* the boy? Give us more?
Wish he made the ending more satisfactory--really do.