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The Memory Keeper's Daughter

By Kim Edwards

(360)

| Hardcover | 9780670034161

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Book Description

Award-winning writer Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted family drama that explores every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you?

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deContinue

Award-winning writer Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted family drama that explores every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you?

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down’s syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by David Henry’s fateful decision that long-ago winter night.

A rich and deeply moving page-turner, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter captures the way life takes unexpected turns and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open. It is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.

Critics

  • Life class

    The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards 408pp, Penguin, £7.99 A New York Times number one bestseller, Kim Edwards's debut is a skilfully packaged debate-provoker that is perfectly attuned to the era of the book club. Like Jodi Picoult or Anita Sh ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • The Best Reviews: Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter

    "Beauty Hides In Different Forms!" Staring at beautiful tulips, David, an orthopedic surgeon with a terrible secret he has chosen to forget, explores "...this idea that the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world." But what Da ... (read full critics)

    thebestreviews published on Thu, 16 Sep 2010

26 Reviews

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  • 3 people find this helpful

    This is another book which I do not know what the hype is all about. It is quite easy to read though.

    The story is too hackneyed - I have seen similar plots in a few movies in the 1950s/60s. Twins - one healthy and the other born with Down Syndrome - were separated since birth due to a decis ... (continue)

    This is another book which I do not know what the hype is all about. It is quite easy to read though.

    The story is too hackneyed - I have seen similar plots in a few movies in the 1950s/60s. Twins - one healthy and the other born with Down Syndrome - were separated since birth due to a decision made by their physician father who would regret this for the rest of his life. Torn by grief and guilt, this family would never be the same again.

    There is nothing wrong with the plot. It's just that it is far too long and quite boring. The characters are abominable and none of them has my sympathy - they brought upon themselves their misery.

    Compared with The Kite Runner, a masterpiece on guilt and redemption, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is just an entry-level novel. Not recommended.

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    Tracy W said on Jun 19, 2007 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • 2 people find this helpful

    Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes tha ... (continue)

    Kim Edwards’s stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.

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    meganzing said on Jul 3, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    Suuuch a downer. I understand that some people may have really liked it and thought it was a very moving emotional journey of a book but if I hadn't been stuck in an airport for seven hours I would never have finished it. Uber depressing, if you like stories about angst and maternal joy/suffering ... (continue)

    Suuuch a downer. I understand that some people may have really liked it and thought it was a very moving emotional journey of a book but if I hadn't been stuck in an airport for seven hours I would never have finished it. Uber depressing, if you like stories about angst and maternal joy/suffering than this is right up your alley.

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    Sarabear135 said on Feb 25, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Same love in contrast

    The story started from Lexington, KY some twenty years ago. Dr. Henry told a white lie to his wife that they gain one health boy but lost another girl. This lie brings twenty years of loss and regret and built up a wall between him and his family. He has to isolate himself so as to keep the deep ... (continue)

    The story started from Lexington, KY some twenty years ago. Dr. Henry told a white lie to his wife that they gain one health boy but lost another girl. This lie brings twenty years of loss and regret and built up a wall between him and his family. He has to isolate himself so as to keep the deep secret in mind. He didn't know how to love the family members nearby but cannot help thinking about the ones he thought he lose long ago. The story has lots of contrast: healthy Paul and unhealthy Phoebe; the one he admires and the one admires him; the decent life he owns and his poor origin (he even changed his name to get rid of it); his generosity to unknown and his isolate to family members.

    Another features of Kim's work is 'regional.' Her description about this area is so detailed and real as if you were on the street or sitting on Dr. Henry's passenger seat. Having lived in PA-OH-WV area for two years, I can even remember every exits on I-76 by reading the book. Not to forget that Caroline lived in Oakland area of Pittsburgh for years. Luckily I lived in the same lovely area for two years. With Kim's words, I can virtually traveled back to Pittsburgh.

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    Yi-Jie Eugene Chen said on Dec 28, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Twins -- one born healthy, the other with Down Syndrome. This was 1964 when the life expectancy for a Down Syndrome child was short (largely because they were locked away in institutions that assumed they couldn't learn or function). The father was a doctor and ended up delivering the baby himself w ... (continue)

    Twins -- one born healthy, the other with Down Syndrome. This was 1964 when the life expectancy for a Down Syndrome child was short (largely because they were locked away in institutions that assumed they couldn't learn or function). The father was a doctor and ended up delivering the baby himself with no one but his nurse and wife present. He told the nurse to take the baby to a specific institution and he told his wife the baby had died. The nurse, upon seeing the inside of the institution, couldn't bear to leave the baby there, so she ran away with her and raised her as her own child. She fought to get her daughter the rights that other children have to a decent education, and she organized other parents in the battle for justice. Throughout the book we watch the two families, one torn apart by the loss of child they had never known, and the other blessed by the presence of that child.

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    Missmath144 said on Aug 31, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Dramatic

    The beginning is what captured me the most; it was very well detailed and everything.

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    Merest Red said on Apr 9, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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9780670034161 Hardcover $24.95 $21.33 bn.com
$24.95 $20.03 The Book Depository
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