Matthew’s Reviews > The Fourteenth Goldfish > Status Update

Chapter 27: After Easily the most powerful chapter in the book. It's revelation time for Ellie, and, whether he wants it or not, Melvin too. It's the first time anyone questions the ethics of scientific discovery. It makes the whole book worthwhile, though I didn't regret reading the rest of the book either. The mere fact that we can does not always mean that we should. What a lesson.

I love this sentence. "The restaurant is buzzing with the crush of Friday night, but our table is the center of my universe." What a gem thrown in the middle of scene of small talk. She could just as easily have written, "It was Friday night so the restaurant was busy, but I wasn't paying attention to anything outside of our table." It would have worked, but she decided to use a little word magic. Brilliant!

Ellie would actually be a good example of someone observing details, which is a great writing lesson in addition to being a scientific research method. She solved the building 24 problem by observing the pizza boy and then the taxicabs in the puzzle she looked at. That's what a good writer does.

I love all the mentions of both science and theater in this book. Both of them would lead well to inquiries that readers could make. Our Town and Les Miserables in the last chapter as well as Jonas Salk. Really well done. I like that it comes up so naturally.