The Perfect Wife is a fun beach read kind of a book. It will draw you in and keep you hooked until the last word. There are some great twists throughout the story that will keep you on your toes, trying to figure out the ending. Some people didn’t enjoy The Perfect Wife because they considered it to be science-fiction. I personally do not feel that it portrays some fantastical future because A.I. is in the news nearly everyday. I believe it’s closer than you think.and that is what The Perfect Wife is about — artificial intelligence. But in this case, it’s about a cobot or companion robot. And that is all I will say about it as I do not want to reveal too much.
Philosophical and moral issues arise as well as legal ones that many of us have never contemplated, which makes the book even more interesting.
The Perfect Wife also has a sub-story about childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) or Heller’s syndrome, which is unfortunately, real. I did not know about CDD so appreciated being informed and learning about it. It is truly a horrific disorder in which the a child regresses in terms of language, cognition and social skills.
Danny has childhood disintegrative disorder, also known as Heller’s syndrome. It’s so rare, most pediatricians have never seen a case. Instead they’d tell you patronizingly that children simply don’t reach the age of four and then get struck down by profound autism over the course of a few terrifying weeks.
CDD takes your child away and swaps him for a stranger—a drooling, broken zombie who inhabits your child’s body. In some ways it’s worse than a death. Because you go on loving this beautiful stranger even while you’re grieving the sweet little person you lost.
The different educational strategies for CDD were explored in the book and again, is fodder for thought as it raises philosophical issues as well.
Perhaps the real test of someone’s humanity, you think, is how tenderly they treat those like Danny. Whether they blindly try to fix them and make them more like everyone else, or whether they can accept their differentness and adapt the world to it.
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