Samyann
The full title of this book is The Boy Who Knew Too Much: An Astounding True Story of a Young Boy’s Past-Life Memories – a bit misleading in that much of the book details the past-life memories of Cathy Byrd, the author of this book and the mother of the ‘young boy’.
The book is non-fiction, ergo a factual representation of reincarnation. The boy is the reincarnation of Lou Gehrig – Byrd the reincarnation of Christina Gehrig, Lou’s mother.
Pros: There are many ‘what-if’ scenarios for the believer and skeptic alike. Reincarnation is considered a reality by far more people than one would think – a few billion … many more believe than dis-believe. There are many details in this story that are difficult to debunk and hard to answer in any way other than a past-life. Easy to believe.
Cons: The ‘stage mother’ comes to mind in Byrd’s behavior several times and in the overall presentation of this book. On the one hand, she indicates a desperate desire for her son to be a normal boy. A few chapters later she’s dragging the kid to Lou Gehrig’s childhood home, Cooperstown, chasing down her own reincarnation as Gehrig’s mother, and encouraging his child-memories. The book comes across as a media hog self-indulgently taking advantage of her son. Criticism is also given for Byrd’s lack of detail regarding her own hypnotic vulnerability – she falls into her previous life immediately – also, the name-dropping is a bit overdone and annoying.
These comments are from a person with a very open mind to the possibility of reincarnation. However, with The Boy Who Knew Too Much, my cons stretch the credibility of the entire book and for these reasons, I disliked it. You may find it peachy.
