The Memory Keeper's Daughter: A Novel

by Kim Edwards

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Genres

All Topics

General Fiction

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Penguin Books (2006), Paperback, 448 pages

Description

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)

Media reviews

Bookreporter.com

Kim Edwards's debut novel is a winner, and those who read THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER are going to want to read her next one. Highly recommended.

User reviews

LibraryThing member LadyHazy

I didn't enjoy this book much at all.

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

be honest I felt incredibly deflated and I just wanted to get to the end so I could read something else.

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.

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LibraryThing member cranmergirl

I found this book engrossing to read but ultimately, disappointing. It is described as a story of betrayal but I would ask, who betrayed whom? The story takes place in 1964 and opens on the night that Norah gives birth to twins. Her husband, David, an orthopedic surgeon, ends up delivering both

babies at his clinic, being unable to get to the hospital in time due to a severe snow storm. The first baby is a healthy boy; when David is expecting the afterbirth, to his complete surprise, a second baby appears. He immediately recognizes that this baby girl has Down syndrome. Many factors account for his heart-wrenching decision that night to hand the baby to his nurse with instructions to take her to an institution, where she will live out what he presumes will be a short and difficult life. He tells Norah that the second baby died in childbirth. One factor contributing to his decision was the thinking about Down syndrome which was prevalent in the medical community at the time. Also influencing his decision was the memory of his sister who was born with a heart defect which claimed her life at the age of twelve and permanently enveloped his family in grief . To me, his decision was wrong but understandable and certainly well-intentioned. His wife, Norah, was not what I would call an emotionally strong individual. I can understand how David would feel the need to try to protect her. Throughout the story, Norah proves herself time and again to be shallow and self-absorbed. I wonder how such an individual would have handled raising a retarded child. I suspect, not well. We are led to believe that if David had made a different decision and kept Phoebe, the second baby, everything would have been just wonderful for the family. I would argue otherwise. There was no end to Norah's self-centeredness. It would be hard to imagine someone like that happily raising a child with special needs. As an example of Norah's selfishness, on their anniversary, Norah's sister babysits Paul while Norah plans a romantic dinner for she and David. Unfortunately, a bad car accident involving teenagers delays her husband for hours, while he tends to the orthopedic injuries of the victims. David calls and explains the situation to Norah. Instead of feeling sorry for her husband and the victims, this nitwit of a self-absorbed individual gets angry and she and her sister proceed to rake David over the coals for his insensitivity. Throughout the book, David gets blamed for everything. The author portrays David's inability to open up to Norah as a justifiable cause for her to seek intimacy elsewhere. She proceeds to sleep around like a cat in heat! The character of the son, Paul, was equally pathetic and unsympathetic. He was forever angry at his father for merely wanting the best for his son, but not particularly angry with his mother for sleeping around. That was an unrealistic portrayal of how a teenager would react to a philandering parent, especially a mother. Norah and Paul were both so weak that it would be difficult to see either of them living happily with a retarded family member and the accompanying challenges. The irony is that to my way of thinking the only really decent character in the family who actually could have handled it was the father. The ending was a big letdown and left me feeling annoyed and perturbed rather than satisfied. Too bad. It could have been a very good book.

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LibraryThing member eleanor_eader

It takes a lot of hard work on an author’s part to get me interested in family drama; characters have to be spot on, the drama worth sitting through, the pathos balanced with distanced narration. It’s not my preferred genre of fiction, and I have trouble with virtually every other book written

by Jodi Picoult, while finding the ones that are good absolutely gripping. Her recommendation on the front cover of Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter put me in two minds whether to pick it up at all. I’m very glad I did, because the theme of memory, of personal history, the way the secret sits and channels everything from there on was utterly fascinating and handled with finesse.

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.

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LibraryThing member kariannalysis

When the Memory Keeper’s Daughter came out on film, I knew I wanted to read it before I watched it. I’m a book before the movie kind of girl. But that put a lot of pressure on the book. I saw the movie on from time to time and had to force myself not to watch it, but I saw the characters so

when I read it, I had a picture of them in my mind.

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.

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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

This is a novel about a decision made in an instant that has repercussions for decades. When Dr. Henry's wife goes into labor during a snowstorm, he ends up delivering the baby with the help of a nurse at his Lexington, Kentucky clinic. But there is an unexpected second baby and this baby has

Down's syndrome. What the doctor decides to do puts a secret at the heart of his marriage.

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.

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LibraryThing member tipsister

I just finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. I really enjoyed it, although the middle dragged a bit. I thought it was beautifully written and truly a heartbreaking story. My only complaint is that I didn't care for most of the characters. I found I wanted more on Caroline and

Phoebe, less on the Henry family. The beginning was completely gripping and the end was so emotional. This was one of the rare moments where I did skim, but it was usually during descriptions of Norah Henry, as I didn't care for her. At all. I did however love Paul at the end. I don't know how he managed to turn out as well as he seemed to. He was an intriguing character and I wish I knew more about him. I definitely recommend the book, despite my issues. I have to be objective right? I'm the reader, I'm entitled to my own opinion as are you. I should mention that I purposely didn't see the movie that was just on TV but I'll have to find it repeating at some point now that the book is done.

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LibraryThing member kerinlo

At times I found this book to be compelling. The author does use vivid imagery to paint the lives of her complex characters, but ultimately, I did not enjoy the book. I found it difficult to sympathize with the characters. Also, the story seemed repetitive and awash with redundant emotion. I didn't

understand the motivations of the characters, especially at the end of the book. Overall I found it to be bogged down with inexplicable action and superficial feelings.

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LibraryThing member ShellyS

This isn't the sort of book that usually attracts me. With few exceptions, the books that are enormously popular, as this has been, and that make critics fall over themselves praising them, usually leave me a bit cold. Sure, I enjoy them well enough, but they don't usually engage me beyond the

surface or stick with me long after the last page is turned, but this one, which interested me because the daughter of the title has Down's Syndrome, is one of the rare ones.

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.

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LibraryThing member kaelirenee

The lives of a set of twins is traced, following their separate upbringings with different parents and different abilities.

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

of contraditions-when David sees his wife at a dinner party she organized, he is amazed by her ability to mingle so well. Yet when he first sees her, this is an ability that originally attracts her.
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.

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LibraryThing member silviastraka

David was the most complex character in this book and his conflicts were what made the book especially interesting to me.

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

marriage from that point on. His decision is also a major influence on the lives of several other people. We keep waiting for him to divulge his secret, but he dies before he can do so. We see him almost telling his wife ... but he never does. This is really sad, because his secret, and his inability to disclose it, robs his marriage of love and intimacy. I think this happens to a lot of people and the novel really depicted it well. It shows the sadness of a life lived without intimacy and the immense burden of a family secret.

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?

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LibraryThing member damsorrow

You know when you're home at your parents' house and you are doing all your laundry, so you put on a pair of your mom's jeans while you're waiting? That's me and this book. It is the mom jeans of books.

LibraryThing member milti

Do you remember reading one of those Reader's Digest Special section things with bated breath? Wiping away tears by the end of it, moved by the story of a couple who lost their 4 year old son in a mall or a sister that was born to donate bone marrow to her older siblings? This book kind of promises

the same heart wrenching story. But it fails to deliver. On all fronts. Here is how the book goes. "But the night David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt them forever." Haunt haunt haunt. Divorce. Haunt haunt haunt. Death. Haunt haunt haunt. Meet the daughter. Haunt haunt haunt. Forgive me for expecting the child with Down's Syndrome to be the star of this book. Instead the focus is on the shallow, obsessive Norah Henry and her equally shallow and selfish husband David, who, from force of circumstance (and probably because he knew his wife) decides not to tell her their other child is alive and well, and prefers faking a funeral and a wake and a gravestone to spare his emotionally unstable wife the truth. The story of this couple is the only story there is. This insidious 'secret' tears their marriage apart and shapes their one child, their son, in ways they cannot understand and choose to blame him for. Hung up on the past, they use their son as emotional leverage. No wonder the child grows up with rage and anger his prominent traits of personality. Their lives are conducted in a misty haze of guilt, accusation and despair. Norah is not a happy mother. She is barely a mother to that one son she has. David is little more than a presence in the house, and a dreadful bungler when he does anything for them at all. This is a story about a family-that-barely-was. To try and infuse some profundity into it is laughable.The most obvious complaint - her characters don't grow. They start out as flat, one-dimensional, self-obsessed beings and they stay that way until the very end. They don't seem to learn from any of their experiences. They don't seem to reflect upon, or take away from, or think through, anything that touches them or anyone that makes a difference to them. The marriage breaks because of this reason, and the individual people stay the same. The son grows up wih a resentment unexpressed, and he stays that way. The daughter, who grows up with another mother, is seen by the author on the outside looking in, and it stays that way. The lame efforts that are made to qualify the daughter's 'progress' or 'see the world through her eyes' (she is 'retarded' of course) are condescending, patronising glimpses on the part of the author - who is looking in as usual. The story is not about the girl. It's about the dreadful, weepy mother who tries hard to claim ownership to child that she never did. I also have a problem with the way things run their course, and it links up with the previous criticism. Even if you take it for granted that this is a family of benumbed characters, who either don't feel anything at all or are unable to, given the experiences that teach them not to care, these characters seem undented by their every experience. The husband moves away - don't care. The husband dies - don't care. They meet the girl - don't care. The son breaks up with his girlfriend - don't care. How is it that you move through every experience with your heart not in it? How can nothing touch you when you are intended to be a character upon whom everything makes an impression?The writer is a product of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. For someone who graduated from the best creative writing program there is anywhere, her style is sadly lacking. Not only is the story insipid and uninspiring, it is fake from the word go. How is it that you intend to write a book filled with feeling and made of feeling people, and then fail so miserably at the touching/moving part? How is it that you can build all your characters to push the limits of one truth and ignore all the others? I would much rather read those summarised book sections in Reader's Digest. They offer more by way of writing than something like this ever could.

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LibraryThing member MarthaHuntley

I read this book for a book discussion group, and the discussion was better than the book. No one in this group particularly liked the book. A good editor would have helped -- there were scenes and characters and long descriptive passages that could and should have been cut out altogether. The best

two aspects of the book, I thought, was the hook -- David sending his Downs Syndrome daughter away at birth which just takes your breath away and sets up the rest of the novel; and the character of the nurse, Caroline Gill. I liked Al, too, and they were almost the only truly sympathetic characters in the book. You could play around with the theme of images and memory; but I got so mad at all those characters keeping all those secrets all their lives -- why couldn't those people just talk to each other?!!

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LibraryThing member kateleversuch

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
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

night
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

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LibraryThing member bookwyrmm

I liked the first couple of chapters, thinking the premise would be tense, filled with family secrets. Shortly thereafter, though, all I found were unsympathetic characters who just made me mad. The pace also dragged a lot. There were some parts I enjoyed, and I liked that the end was more positive

than I thought it would be, but overall, despite Edwards's capable prose, this was just not for me.

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LibraryThing member 1morechapter

I was impressed by this book, and especially so as it was the author's debut.

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

office. The birth goes fine and a healthy baby boy named Paul is born. However, they unexpectedly have twins (it's 1964), and there is a "problem" with their daughter--she has Down's Syndrome. Due to his own family background of having a chronically ill sister, David tells the nurse Caroline to take it to a "home". Meanwhile, he tells his wife that their daughter Pheobe has died. The rest of the book goes into their marriage and family relationships in the aftermath of this "secret".

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.

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LibraryThing member EmScape

It was so nice to read a beautifully written book with actual, developed characters, and a fully realized plot after the crap I’ve been reading. I might be giving this book an artificially inflated review just because of the comparison.
Really, though, it’s written extraordinarily well, with

descriptions that leap off the page, and similes and metaphors that are not at all heavy handed or obvious.
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.

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LibraryThing member CasualFriday

Kim Edwards's bestseller about a man who gives away his infant with Down Syndrome and tells his wife she died at birth reads like everybody's stereotypical idea of an Oprah book - except Oprah generally picks better books. It isn't godawful, like the Kris Radish books, but the plot is contrived and

the characters undeveloped. Some of the pivotal points of the drama happen offstage, and the reader is just told about them. Other plot points flare up - the wife's affairs, the son's acts of theft and vandalism - and then just flicker out, unexamined. The prose, to my ear anyway, is bloated and self-important. I like metaphor and I like lyricism and I even like flowery writing, up to a point, but I want there to be a there there. This book shouts out its Importance, but what does it ultimately say? Deceit hurts a marriage? You shouldn't treat Down Syndrome kids like kittens you drop off at a shelter? Okay, I agree. Next...

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LibraryThing member piemouth

I knew I’d hate this so why did I read it? I don’t even want to talk about it. I'm giving it a half star because at least it was literate.

Noble retarded person redeems others. zzzzz

LibraryThing member dukedukegoose

I. Did not enjoy this book at all. I thought it was trite, uninspired, insipid and disappointing.

LibraryThing member callmejacx

After reading the first three pages I was looking forward to the next time I would pick up the book. Unfortunatly, the more I read, the less interested I was in the book.

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

her home. Norah’s husband, David, who is an orthopedic surgeon, will be delivering his baby, with the help of a nurse, Caroline.

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.

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LibraryThing member Renny31

The Memory Keeper's Daughter took me by surprised because I'm not rating it 4 stars for typical reasons. Readers are drawn to the characters because in one way or another, they can relate to situations or emotions that occur in this book.

When I first started the book, I had I hard time with it

because sometimes I would get so upset with some of the things the characters would do, but later I realized that this is what makes it such a good story. It got me emotionally envolved. Although fictional, the story did educate me and drove me to educate myself further on the topic of Down Syndrome. I also think the story is important because the underlying message is very basic, "The truth shall set you free". The story spands a family's lifetime and shows how a small lie or action taken with good intentions, can ultimately destroy you and those you love. For these reasons I highly recommend this book if you're interested in a book that is deeper and more emotionally driven with conflicted characters and questions that don't have easy answers.

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LibraryThing member Deb85

A snowy night. An anonymous expectant couple. An accident. The birth. A decision. A lie.

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

night of birth that shapes the lives of the characters, their choices, reactions, and interactions. From this point, the characters are given names and begin to be known to us.

"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.

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LibraryThing member sheridanevans

I think this book took far too long to come to a conclusion and feel that the story could have been more satisfying if the twins could have found each other earlier.

LibraryThing member LDVoorberg

I am surprised to see this book so highly recommended and on the bestsellers list. If I ever publish a novel, I want [author:Kim Edwards'] publicity agent! To me the novel reeked of a first time writer. Its style, descriptions, 'symbolism', and predictability are more aligned with what I expect

from a high school student than a published novel.

Read it only if you're looking for a simple-minded story.

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