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The Memory Keeper's Daughter | 
 enlarge | Author: Kim Edwards
Publisher: Large Print Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $1.79
You Save: $12.16 (87%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  858 reviews
Sales Rank: 48984
Format: Large Print
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 711
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 159413197X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594131974
ASIN: 159413197X
Publication Date: February 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Kim Edwardss stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mothers 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 Keepers Daughter is an astonishing tale of redemptive love. BACKCOVER: Edwards is a born novelist. . . . Rich with psychological detail and the nuances of human connection.
Chicago Tribune
Unfolds from an absolutely gripping premise, drawing you deeply and irrevocably into the entangled lives of two families and the devastating secret that shaped them both. I loved this riveting story.
Sue Monk Kidd
Anyone would be struck by the extraordinary power and sympathy of The Memory Keepers Daughter.
The Washington Post
Kim Edwards has written a novel so mesmerizing that I devoured it. . . . The Memory Keepers Daughter has it all.
Sena Jeter Naslund
Kim Edwards has created a tale of regret and redemption, of honest emotion, of characters haunted by their past. This is simply a beautiful book.
Jodi Picoult
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 It left me feeling queasy. September 6, 2008
"The Memory Keeper's Daughter" opens in March 1964, with Dr David Henry and his wife, Norah, soon to become parents. The couple, who live in Kentucky, had only met about a year previously - but were married within three months and quite clearly didn't hang about when it came to starting a family. Unfortunately, with a blizzard raging outside, Norah goes into labour - three weeks ahead of schedule. The couple manage to make it as far as David's own clinic - where David and one of his nurses, Caroline Gill, look after the delivery. However, where one child had been expected, two arrive - Paul, a perfectly healthy son, and Phoebe, who has Down's Syndrome. David's sister, June, had died when she was twelve due to a heart problem, and he is convinced his daughter's life will also be short. Remembering how June's death had broken his mother's heart, he decides to try and spare Norah the same grief. He hands his daughter to Caroline, and instructs her to bring Phoebe to an institution he knows of. She sets out to do as she's asked - but, on seeing the institution, she can't leave the newborn girl there. Instead, she does a runner to Pittsburgh and decides to raise Phoebe as her own daughter. "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" tells the story of both families - alternating between David, Norah and Paul on one side and Caroline and Phoebe on the other.
I have never had so much difficulty in getting through a book - but, if only I had read the blurb, I'd have known to avoid it like the plague. "A tale of regret and redemption...so lovely you have to re-read", Jodi Picoult comments, while Sue Monk Kidd warbles about "the entangled lives to two families and the devastating secret that shapes them both". The writing inside is even worse - page after page of nauseating froth. Handled properly, the story could well have been worth reading...but Edwards could only come up with genuinely awful cliches. If lines like "it was a moment real to only the two of them...an instant of communion" and "he says he's most alive when he's playing the guitar" sound like your idea of good time, you're in for a ball - otherwise, keep well away.
Had to force myself to finish it..... September 4, 2008
This book was a book club choice, so unfortunately all 700 times I wanted to put it down and never pick it up again I really couldn't. The characters were so boring and the descriptions went on and on. I actually believe there were about three pages devoted to a vaccume burning up. The story was a great idea, but the telling of it fell more than flat. I am not sure how it became a best seller...perhaps the pretty cover? I am an avid reader, and was extremely dissapointed with The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
 The Memory Keeper's Daughter September 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After an excellent, even brilliant opening chapter, "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" descends into an overlong soap opera with little plot credibility.
Norah is one of the most negative, unsympathetic characters I have encountered in fiction. Her grief for her supposedly dead daughter Phoebe was excessive and unreal. She did not know she was expecting twins, and only learned about it after their birth. Still she wallows in self pity for years and chooses to obsess on her loss.
The reader never knows what exactly is wrong in David and Norah's marriage. The author devotes lengthy portions of the narrative to simply being vague on the issue. What is the problem? Is David withdrawn? Not attentive? Devote too much time to his photography? He does provide an affluent lifestyle for his family that allows Norah to indulge in her proclivity to redecorate every year.
By contrast the marital difficulties of Caroline and Al are explained succinctly. They had drifted apart through the logistics of daily living: something easily understood by the reader.
But one cannot understand Norah's alienation from David. Her long, wild drives in the car, endangering their son Paul.
Norah's adulterous affair with Howard (easily the biggest slimeball in modern fiction) renders her totally unsympathetic. Nor did she feel regret for any of her infidelities, although David had been faithful to her.
The nadir of the book is Norah's burning of David's photographs and negatives after finally learning the truth about Phoebe. Revenge? She had been unfaithful to her husband with several men. Was that not revenge enough? Since David's pictures now hung in museums and galleries she was burning works of art. To say nothing of destroying her son's inheritance. One suspects Norah's attempts to salvage some of the boxes of photos targeted for destruction was due to an editor's intervention rather than the character's conscience.
One is also puzzled by Paul's hostility toward David. The latter had tried to be a good and loving father. Even after his death Norah and Paul contined to trash David.
Unlike other readers I could relate to the character of Caroline. I found her interesting and credible.
"The Memory Keeper's Daughter" was tedius and choking on extraneous detail. Perhaps the author is more a poet than a novelist.
Pretty decent book if you don't mind knowing what's coming next. September 1, 2008
This book overall was a good read. It kept me interested even though it was very predictable. The emotions of the characters kept me reading. The price is right, so pick it up for a diversion. You'll be satisfied.
Too predictable August 31, 2008
I can see why this was made into a movie on the Lifetime Network. Very chick flicky and very predictable.
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