by Kim Edwards
This novel is the story of a doctor who delivers his own twins--a healthy boy, and a girl with Downs Syndrome. He makes a life-altering decision to give away his daughter while his wife is unconsicous, and tells her instead that the baby was stillborn.
The story follows the parallel lives of the doctor's family, always shadowed by their missing daughter, and the nurse who takes the daughter and raises her as her own.
I thought the premise for this book was great. It starts with two emotional, gut-wrenching decisions, but fails to keep that level of intensity throughout the novel. After awhile I started to wonder why the author followed the two families for so dang long. Do we need to see the doctor's family on vacation? To know about the nurse's wooing by a trucker? A novel that moves through decades should show you the poignant, key events that shape the lives of the main characters, bringing the reader to the ultimate conclusion of the story. Though the book itself isn't long, I felt like I spent too much time with these characters at odd points in their lives. The connections we're given don't really drive the plot. They are more mile markers along The Memory Keeper's Daughter highway.
It's not a bad book, but I was a little underwhelmed.
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2 comments:
I read this book a while ago, too. I did enjoy the beginning of the book and the premise, but I also felt like it dragged. I also really wanted the "showdown" between the birth mother and the nurse, and I wanted them to kick the piss out of the dad. I think I was pissed at the mother through most of the book because I wanted her to be stronger. I hope I'm not confusing this with another book!
No confusion at all--I, too, was bugged by both of the parents. Dad constantly afraid of the truth, then too guilt-ridden to do anything to even attempt to save his marriage. Mom too drunk or self-absorbed to be a real wife or mother. It was hard to like either of them. I felt bad for the son, who never really knew why his family had fallen apart.
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