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The Memory Keeper's Daughter | 
 enlarge | Author: Kim Edwards
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $10.20
You Save: $4.80 (32%)
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Rating:  891 reviews
Sales Rank: 1623
Media: Paperback
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0143037145
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780143037149
ASIN: 0143037145
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 886 more reviews...
 Read this, read this, read this! November 26, 2005
K. G Havemann (Dayton, OH United States)
490 out of 547 found this review helpful
I don't read a lot of fiction and I most especially do not read romances. I'm not sure how this book is categorized but it is the most compulsively readable, emotional, and memorable book I've read since "Gone With the Wind" over 40 years ago. This is an epic story of a doctor who, in an emotional moment and with all his medical knowledge telling him to protect those he loves, makes a decision that affects him and everyone around him forever. On a blizzardly night in 1964, David Henry helps his wife give birth to twins, one a perfect boy and the other a girl with Downs Syndrome. At that time, imperfect children were "put away" in institutions where they died young and families and friends spoke of them in shame-filled whispers, if at all. David grew up with a very sickly sister whose death at age 12 ended all meaningful life for his parents. With all good intentions of sparing his wife and new son the pain he and his parents endured, he made a fateful decision and told his wife the little girl had died at birth. It was a decision that, once made, could not be redeemed nor remedied. Time inexorably moves away from that moment but, instead of becoming distant, it grows tentacles that seize their beings and influence everything for the next three decades. We learn a photograph can capture a moment but it cannot tell you what encompasses it, what came before and after. It cannot effect change, it cannot correct. One moment, one choice, and an ever-widening circle of consequences, many roads taken and many not.
The writing in The Memory Keeper's Daughter is so well-articulated, the story itself is so engrossing and so different from any I have read before, that hard as I tried to remain disaffected, about 100 pages before the end I felt actual pain knowing there was a last page. As I came to know every nuance of these characters, I wanted to reach into the pages and tell them everything, something, anything, to stop time, to take a different road and change the past, then go on again. Honestly, I have never felt quite this way about a book before.
A FIRST-RATE VOICE PERFORMANCE August 1, 2005
Gail Cooke (TX, USA)
127 out of 173 found this review helpful
Read with both understanding and understatement film and stage actress Martha Plimpton delivers a first rate performance of Kim Edwards's debut novel. Stage trained voices tend to have an added richness, a resonance not found among other audio book readers. Such is the case with Plimpton in this story of a Down's Syndrome child and the two families she binds together.
When Dr. David Henry's wife goes into labor during a paralyzing winter storm he is forced to deliver his child. His wife, Nora, is under heavy sedation and he is assisted by Caroline, his nurse. Henry's joy is boundless when he delivers a healthy son and also discovers that he is to be the father of twins. With the birth of his second child, a daughter, he makes an immediate and fateful decision. The child is born with Down's Syndrome so believing that he will spare his wife pain he tells Caroline to immediately take the child to an institution and never reveal what she has done. He tells Nora that their son's fraternal twin died at birth.
Caroline is far too kind hearted to obey Henry's orders, so she flees to another city where she raises the daughter, Phoebe.
We can never know whether some decisions we make are for good or ill or what effect they will have upon the future lives of those we love. Author Edwards traces the story of this particular family over 25 years as Nora mourns the loss of her baby girl, and a long kept secret is revealed.
- Gail Cooke
 No Memories for Me December 3, 2005
Haley Parnham (NJ)
57 out of 63 found this review helpful
I found THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER to be disappointing for me. I chose it for the story which sounded wonderful, but I found the writing tedious. The story didn't move for me. It seemed to be in a midst of a fog with far too many details about things that didn't matter and not enough about things that did interest me. After awhile, I didn't care if I finished it or not and started other books, which I completed, before returning to this one. I wished I'd checked it out at the library rather than spent money on it, quite honestly.
 Is it okay to just donate it to the library, unfisnished? September 23, 2006
SmartLin (Lakewood, CA United States)
42 out of 47 found this review helpful
The one star is for the cover artwork and title. I am struggling through this book. Why I keep on reading, I don't know. (I have heard, "that which doesn't kill you, makes you strong") It just seems wrong not to finish a book. I admit I bought it for the cover and the synopsis of the story thinking it would be interesting. But it is just plain boring, lacking any type of character development that would make me care at all about any of them.
I keep coming to what seem like pivotal moments in the story and wonder why I should care, knowing as little as I do about the people and their significance to one another. One example is when Doro leaves her home to Caroline and departs with her new husband. It FELT like such a climax yet I couldn't figure out how I got there. (I thought maybe I had bookmarked the wrong page and missed the parts that developed the friendship between Caroline and Doro.) Likewise, when I read about Paul's partying in the photo studio, I thought, "oh boy, here we go, this is going to get real now!" considering how kooky his dad is about his photography. But nope, naughty Paul just has to reorganize everything. Everything just keeps falling flat. It does kind of feel like a made-for-tv movie with lots of spots for commercial breaks...
MUST I finish it? Is it okay to just donate it to the library, unfisnished?
 An epic study on the effect of lies. Reminiscent of the Gothic novel April 29, 2007
Brenna Iles (Northern Kentucky)
35 out of 36 found this review helpful
The Memory Keeper's Daughter begins in Kentucky. In the middle of a terrible Blizzard Dr. David Henry is forced to help deliver his own twins when his wife Norah goes into labor. Caroline Gill is Dr. Henry's nurse who worships him from afar. Caroline comes to the clinic to help the doctor and Norah.
Norah gives birth to twins. The first is Paul, a healthy beautiful boy. The second child is Phoebe. The doctor notices immediately that his child has downs syndrome. He flashes back to his own childhood where he watched his sister's illness and death tear his family apart. David decides to tell his wife that the child was stillborn and send Phoebe to an institution where she will be given the care she needs and his family will be spared the heartache of Down syndrome.
David convinces the nurse Caroline to take the child away and swears her to secrecy.
Caroline is unable to leave the infant and relocates to another city to raise the child herself. She spends years trying to create a safe, fair place in the world for Phoebe, making sure that she got the education she deserved.
David's lies eat away at him. Creating a space between him and the family he wanted to protect.
Norah struggles to let go of the daughter she never knew and can not understand why her husband is trying to bury the subject of their daughter with her body. This makes it hard for her to mourn properly.
The next three decades keep two families tied together with a secret that most of them aren't aware of. In it's conclusion, their son Paul is left with the undeniable truth. That happily ever after is a myth. That good people are flawed. That you can attempt to right wrongs but in the end all you can do is choose not to repeat them.
Kim Edwards takes us to the heart of several very complicated issues in The Memory Keepers Daughter. It is written in painstaking detail and most likely not the best read for someone looking for a fast paced, dramatic novel. The sentiment in this book can be rather overwhelming at times.
Overall, I found The Memory Keepers Daughter a beautifully written story that slowly builds to create a powerful message of family and the ties that bind them.
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