Black Swans

Caroline Cooney is a staple for any mystery loving teen. Therefore, many of her titles find a home in my classroom library.

I came across Three Black Swans while perusing my school's book fair. The back of the hardcover reads: "Black Swans: events that are hugely important, rare and unpredictable, and explainable only after the fact."

This sets up quite an unusual premise, girls discovering they are part of a multiple birth adoption. Initially I was irritated I hadn't read the first few pages prior to purchasing the book. I found the writing odd, and felt that perhaps Cooney was just writing to meet a deadline.

I gave it time, and ended up enjoying the book despite some plot issues and issues with the characters. The set-up seems implausible. How could girls, who spend as much time with each other as they do, not recognize they are identical? While Cooney does a fair job of explaining this (one girl was quite small when born, and apparently there are cases where identical twins don't look alike until the tiniest grows and catches up)..so okay, I end up buying this.

However there are issues with paperwork and schooling that I don't truly buy, but I go with the flow, because the mystery of it remains intriguing.

That is the only intriguing aspect though. The characters are mere outlines, and that diminishes the novel. Each girl (a third is soon introduced) is only a caricature of what she could be. It is as if Cooney had an outline: this character will react this way, and this this way, and she never got around to developing nuances. The worst by far was the development of the birth parents. While initially it seems plausible they made the decision to do what they did, their reconciliation with ViVi isn't at all plausible.

Nor is it believable that no one in their immediate family recognized what was going on. Cooney should never have mentioned a shower was thrown for the birth parents, because after-all that is done late in a pregnancy, and there is no way a woman giving birth to triplets could pretend she is only giving birth to one, at that stage of the game so to speak.

So...plot holes, lack of character development would normally make for a poor review. And it does, if you are an average reader. But, if you are the parent of a daughter who is "aliterate" someone who can read but chooses not to, than you might want to buy this and give it to her.

The pacing is great; the honing in on how teen girls think, what they fantasize about, how a moment in time with an impulsive decision can have huge ramifications, the whole "I think I am adopted" fantasy many teens have (tripled here) will be a huge draw for those girls who simply can't find a book that meets their criteria.

I know the students I am going to recommend this novel to, as well as a particular 8th grade niece.