This from a smart piece by Ann Hulbert in Slate (which, almost as an afterthought, obliterates the notion that KV wrote How Opal Mehta…):

[After the bogus publication process] Viswanathan might almost be forgiven for having forgotten that originality was even the goal she was striving for. Not that she would think twice, either, when Little, Brown’s publisher touted the “freshness of the voice” in a special publicity letter about her book. ….It’s tempting to wonder whether Viswanathan, if she could find her own voice, might foist some of the blame for her borrowings onto her endlessly enabling elders. But that is, of course, the last thing a much-mentored superkid, intent on success, has been reared to do.

Also in Slate, Joshua Foer shows that KV can not have a photographic memory because, to put it bluntly, there is no such thing.

“If Viswanathan really wants to stick to her story,” Foer writes, “I know a few scientists who’d probably like to meet her.”