With Cameron Diaz,
Abigail Breslin and Joan Cusack on this book’s cover, I couldn’t resist picking it up from the bookstore’s
shelf. I haven’t even heard of the movie yet, but I was very much intrigued with the book’s title. I thought that this book might be a terrific tear-jerker – and I’m always up for some book-triggered sniffle time in my favorite couch!
So this is how the story goes …
Anna is the youngest child in a brood of three. She has lived her life knowing that she was conceived and born as a bone marrow match for her older sister, Kate, for the purpose of helping her fight the leukemia that has afflicted her since childhood.
But now that Anna is already a teenager, she is beginning to question her identity as well as the morality behind her existence. She is starting to doubt her role and significance in her family, not to mention the love and attention that her parents shower – or, do not shower – on her.
Armed with the vigor, willpower, and sense of invincibility of youth, she makes a decision that creates ripples right at the heart of their family -- ripples that greatly affect everyone, including the sister that she most loves.
The peaks and troughs in this book got me turning its pages one after the other in rapturous anticipation. I sympathized with Anna in the battle between her right to be free to protect and keep her own body safe and healthy, and her duty to her helpless sister. The demands on her young body have come to a point when being her sister’s hero is already becoming too restrictive and potentially harmful.
The book also instigated my interest on the controversial subject of
designer babies – embryos genetically molded by experts to come out as babies who are exactly how their parents wanted them to be. Modern Science has never ceased to amaze me with all the wonders and breakthroughs that they have introduced to society throughout the years. Decades ago, there was no means for pregnant mothers to know the gender of their babies, nor the possible abnormalities that their unborn offspring could possess at birth. These days, parents could actually take a peek inside the womb and see exactly how their babies look like. 3D and 4D scans make it possible for eager parents to watch their babies’ activities inside the womb, stare into those tiny faces, count those miniature fingers and toes and fondly debate on whose side the babies take after. But a more aggressive scheme is now starting to get popular for more audacious parents. Modern Science is now equipped to dictate the genetic structure of the future’s youth.
Quite similar to Anna’s case, there are individuals out there who were conceived and born for a specific purpose other than the traditional and natural one where couples come together to spawn their own offspring and go on to live happily ever after in family-life bliss – or not. Whatever the case, there are people like Anna with an explicit task at the exact hour of their birth. There are those who walk this earth merely because an heir is needed for a wealthy, elderly father’s estate. There are those who exist because a debt needs to be paid and the couple has no monetary means to do so.
What would it be like to be them? How would it feel to realize that, without the specific purpose you were conceived and born with, you wouldn’t even be here today? What if that specific purpose suddenly does not need to be met anymore? What, then, would become of you? Would people still love you? Would people still need you? Or, would you swiftly turn into an burden – worthless and unwanted?