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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 the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night.… (more)
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I found the characters irritating, and the story felt like one big melodrama after another. It seemed like the author lost all sense of proportion and made everything a 'big deal', when it really wasn't - there was only one, underlying 'big deal' in the book.
To
The book is recommended by Jodi Picoult and Sue Monk Kidd, (I was planning on reading some of their books, but I'm not so sure now) and is a multi-million US No.1 bestseller, so you might want to give it a chance, but it just wasn't for me.
It’s moving, too… I can handle that when a writer is not simply trying to play my emotions like a toy banjo; the decision to remove the Down’s Syndrome twin from the family unit without the mother’s knowledge was a monstrous act of compassion and the reader is involved in every consequence as half a dozen or so lives play out around it.
About three quarters of the way though, it dragged a little and then did a little skip, as though the author had just realised she was getting a bit entrenched… the end more than redeemed this slight flaw; the simple good nature of Phoebe, quite content with her life, set against the troubled background of her existence is beautiful, and Edwards uses that to shine a light across what might otherwise have been the bleak landscape of a shattered family.
Even if the ‘misery-lit’ feel of the subject initially turns you off, this is a gem of a read. If you were, like me, to only rarely put aside your dislike of exploring family dysfunction and secrets, this is the book to do it for. And if you like that sort of thing anyway… this is how it should be done.
One thing I learned from this book is that I need to read light books. This had its light points, but was serious. After I’ve been at work all day dealing with shootings, missing people etc I need something light and silly to get me through.
I liked this book because it hit close to home. My brother was born a few months early and has learning disabilities, but I can never imagine my parents giving him up. That thought it just crazy. I know this book happened a few decades earlier when this happened a lot, but it still blows my mind.
I really like that this book covered an entire life span. A lot of the books I’ve been reading lately cover a week or a few months. This covers from the time the kids were born until they were in their late 20s. It’s nice to get to see someone grow up and the people they become.
I also like how you went back and forth from Paul’s life to Phoebe’s life. You got to keep up with both of them although they were miles and miles apart. I know that is the point of the story, but I thought Kim Edwards did it well.
I’ve been reading a lot of stories from New Jersey and London, but it was nice to read one from Louisville. It’s nice to read about places that are near home and nice to read about rivers I’ve heard of and places I’ve been to.
One of the things I least liked about this book was all the secrets. Things like this paranoy me. Michael would never do something like give away our child (David) or be unfaithful (Norah), but this book kind of makes me lose faith in honesty. I can’t imagine living a whole life with these secrets.
There were positives about this book, but I think the negatives override and I only give this book 3 bookmarks. It was just so-so.
So this is a book with a lot going on. It was a bestseller and a book club favorite and if you like a story where all the people have a lot of emotions and secrets and yet somehow a reasonably happy ending, this is the book for you. I didn't buy into the heightened emotions and would have set this book aside had it not been a book club pick. The writing was serviceable enough, I guess. I really dislike the "look at these people having Very Intense Feelings And Not Communicating" trope, so this was never going to be the book for me.
The plot is pure soap opera. It's also about secrets and how they can control your life. A doctor, upon delivering his twins during a snowstorm in 1964, sees the telltale signs of Down's Syndrome in his baby girl and gives her to his nurse to bring to an institution, hoping to spare his wife the grief of raising a child he believes is doomed to a short, unhappy life. Their son is healthy and perfect and that should be enough, so he tells her their daughter died.
The nurse, however, can't bring herself to leave the baby in such a dreadful place, and secretly in love with the doctor and longing for a child of her own, takes the baby and moves away. The consequences of the doctor's decision and the nurse's act are what move the book through the next 25 years.
The doctor, David Henry, consumed with his never reconciled grief over his own sister's death at an early age and guilt over giving up Phoebe, grows estranged from his wife, Norah, and their son, Paul, losing himself in his work and in photography as he tries to capture life in pictures, seeking something he can't quite find.
Meanwhile, Caroline, the nurse, in trying to make a life for Phoebe, becomes a confident mother fighting for the education and rights of her child, finding love with a truck driver, while fighting the fear that David will find her and demand she return Phoebe to him.
The prose gets overly poetic at times and the plot often feels forced, manipulative, as things have to happen the way they do, coincidences and all, so things will work out as they do, but that didn't matter because the characters are so richly drawn in their pain and triumphs. The emotions ring true, even if I would've liked something a bit different at the end,which I don't want to mention because it will give too much away.
So, while I'm late to reading this book, if there are any of you out there who hasn't read it, I recommend it. And keep a tissue handy.
There are very few times in a novel that I want to reach into the book and throttle a character. I wanted to throttle every single adult character in this novel. They are full
The only character I ever felt a glimmer of respect for was Carline-and then only because of her efforts to get her daughter into school (my son has special needs, so I have a great deal of respect for the people who worked so hard to secure the rights of all children to get a free and appropriate public education)-but that was quickly tempered by the continued cliches.
The book is frustratingly full of cliches-both of phrases and of plotlines. Halfway through the novel, I was rolling my eyes repeatedly. I knew what was happening way too far in advanced. I thought it was only all happy families that were suppose to be the same, and unhappy ones are unhappy in different ways. There was nothing different about these families. Lies, hiding, secrets, the inability to talk about problems, dad telling son what to be when he grows up, distance between a married couple. In the hands of a more talented author, these are compelling plot devices. Instead, these were hackneyed pieces to a promising story.
I realize that I am not the target audience for this book-yes, I'm a woman and the mother of a special needs child. But I also want my fiction to speak to me, not to repeat what I can get elsewhere from better writers.
He makes one decision -- in a moment of crisis, a moment when he is already not thinking clearly and is under tremendous pressure -- and it affects the course his life and
It also shows the danger of trying to "protect" our loved ones by not telling them things we think would hurt them or damage our relationship with them. In the end, David lost his family anyway.
This book showed that our actions -- even if well-intentioned -- have consequences that can't always be undone. What do we do about that? And what set of consequences do we choose?
I loved this book! It was truely amazing. Here is the blurb from Amazon:
Families have secrets they hide even from themselves... It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy
family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a
that will haunt five lives for ever.
For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome.
And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will
reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her
care to a nurse.
As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her
own way in the world as best she can.
I found myself falling in love with the characters, thinking about them when I wasn't reading the book, and eager to know what was happening with the characters when reading about the other family. The descriptions were beautiful and the characters easy to connect with. I loved the ending too it was so touching. I read this book very quickly and easily. Even though I finished the book a couple of days ago I am still thinking about it. This book will stay with me a long time I think. I highly recommend this moving book.
10/10
The following paragraph isn't really a "spoiler" as it happens in the first few pages of the book.
Dr. David Henry and his wife Norah can't get to the hospital in time to have their baby, so they go to his own doctor's
I loved the story for several reasons. First, it was very well written and was a very easy read. I read the book in a 24 hour period. Also, it is mostly set in Lexington, Ky, and I live only an hour from there. Many of the descriptions of the bluegrass area were things I recognized and appreciated. I related to almost all the main characters for personal reasons. In fact, this book was one I chose to offer about myself for the Something About Me Challenge. David feels like an "imposter" in his professional life, Norah has postpartem depression, and Paul is kept from the knowledge that his sister is alive. These were all issues that I have experienced as well.
The book is a little sad and explores the consequences of family secrets, but it is also hopeful. I look forward to Kim Edwards' next novel.
Really, though, it’s written extraordinarily well, with
To be honest, the premise wasn’t intriguing to me, but I picked it up because it was popular and recommended and well thought of by people whose opinions I respect. Also, it was .25 cents at a garage sale. However, I was captivated by the lives of David & Norah Henry, their son Paul, and the Down Syndrome baby, Pheobe, that David gave up at birth. David told Norah that Pheobe died, and that secret influences their family in many ways. David’s nurse, Caroline, was told to bring the baby to an institution, but instead she keeps the baby and raises her as her own. As a reader, you are constantly trying to figure out how the secret will eventually be discovered. A few times they are so close your heart starts racing.
The book spans more than 25 years, but is divided into sections approximately five years apart, and we are given a few chapters on the lives of each of the characters during some important milestones in their lives. The dynamism of the characters, while still remaining fundamentally trapped in their former lives and lies is stunning. For the author to be so genuine in writing the inner lives of such a disparate cast is truly an accomplishment.
Noble retarded person redeems others. zzzzz
It starts on the night of a snow blizzard with Norah feeling her first labor pain.. She was going to have the baby that night in
The baby was coming fast. Not long after the first pain, the baby boy slipped into David's waiting arms. If it was going to be a boy, they agreed to call him, Paul and if it was going to be a girl, Phoebe.
Paul was a beautiful baby and perfect. Every parents dream. While the nurse takes the baby to another room to bathe him, Norah experiences another contraction. This baby was a girl. David noticed the unmistakable features of a mongoloid.
Remembering, David’s past, when his little sister became ill. How it changed everyone’s life. The pain they experienced every day until the death and not ever getting over the loss of her, wasn’t something that he wanted his wife and his family to go through.
He made a split second decision asking the nurse to take the baby to a home that he has heard about where they look after babies like this one and telling his wife that the Pheobe had died.
The nurse drives the baby to her future home.
Entering the home Caroline can not believe what she is seeing. This home will destroy Phoebe. She couldn’t leave the child here. Making a quick decision, Caroline decides she will bring up Phoebe as her own.
This is where the story starts to drag on. The climax was at the beginning of the story. I kept reading thinking that something big eventually was going to happen, but it didn’t.
I felt words were entered just to make the story longer. There was too much time on description of the character’s, what they were doing, but to my surprise there was a point in the book that it seemed that the death of a character is put in as an afterthought. There was no mention that the character was even ill.
I loved the story line, liked the character’s, but it just went on about nothing in particular for much too long.
When I first started the book, I had I hard time with it
This is the quiet setup for the story of "The Memory Keeper's Daughter." This book is a study of how a choice made in one brief moment can change the course of lives. It is the decision made and lie told on this
"The Memory Keeper's Daughter" grew out of a true story told to Kim Edwards by one of her pastors. Edwards did not begin writing this book right away but, she said in an interview(included in the back of the penguin Books edition), "The idea stayed with me...as the necessary stories do." (p. 3 of the reader's guide.)
Just as Edwards was compelled to write by her character's decision, we are compelled to read. The desire to know when and how the secret will come to light, and what will happen to those around when it does, is the driving force of this novel. A beautifully written story of darkness and light.
Edwards' short story collection called "The Secrets of the Fire King" was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award. Edwards earned her MFA degree from the University of Iowa, and has been an associate professor of english at the university of kentucky, specializing in creative writing and English as a Second Language.
Read it only if you're looking for a simple-minded story.