A clever idea which I think did not quite hit its targets. I thought that the device Fowler began with was potentially very interested and I was curious to see where it took her. But the twist, about a hundred or so pages in, wound up taking over the book, as it were. In the end this book read a bit more like a political argument for a certain point of view, and not a particularly artfully done argument, at that. And, setting aside the merits of Fowler’s point, I’m not a big fan of politics in fiction unless it’s altogether well-done. But she does in fact have a point, and she does make it reasonably well - it’s by and large very believable that the characters would behave and react the way they do to the sort of odd plot constraints that she’s given them; except, I’d say, Lowell, who seems like the sort of kid who would shrug his shoulders through life, rather than act as he did. There are larger questions to consider here - what does it mean to be human and what do parents owe their children, even, to some degree, what is a good life. I suppose if the book were better written I’d be more inclined to consider them, but dammit, the storytelling device was just not properly executed, so I’ll stop there.

(I’m also trying, here, not to give the plot twist away. I actually think that the plot twist weakens the book a fair amount, and had the reader learned the relevant facts more or less from the beginning of the book, I think it would have been stronger by far. Alas.)