Apparently Kaavya Viswanathan has now admitted that passages from her book were lifted from another writer.
"Publisher Little, Brown and Company, which had signed Viswanathan to a reported six-figure deal, said in a statement Thursday that it had notified retail and wholesale outlets to stop selling copies of the book, and to return unsold copies to the publisher....Little, Brown has said the book will be revised as quickly as possible."
What I don't understand is why they're revising it. They should simply stop selling the book and Viswanathan should be blacklisted from publishing anything ever again.
I perused through a few pages of one of her books online last night and, from what I read, she seemed very talented for a 19 year old. Unfortunately now we'll never know how much of her talent was real and how much of it was hers and how much was borowed from other writers.
But if you want to read something very poignant and well written, I suggest you check out the essay titled Vessels by Daniel Raeburn in the May 1 issue of the New Yorker. (Sorry, no online version is available.) It's a touching story about his wife giving birth to a stillborn baby. It was hard to read having lost a daughter but I enjoyed it nonetheless.