Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Warning: There may be spoilers in this review.

I almost didn't read The Memory Keeper's Daughter.  It was something I picked up on PaperbackSwap, and I debated for a few days before requesting it.  I wasn't sure about the subject matter, it was an author I was unfamiliar with, etc.  But I finally requested it, it came in, and I read it from cover to cover in 24 hours.

I love this book.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter begins on a winter evening in 1964.  When a freak snowstorm derails his colleague, Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his own children with the aid of a nurse, Caroline.  With his wife in a drug-induced sleep that leaves her with no memory of the birth, David safely delivers twins -- a healthy son, and a daughter with the symptoms of Down syndrome.  Anguished, David makes a hasty decision that will haunt him the rest of his life.  He hands his little girl to Caroline and tells her to take the child to a home for the disabled, so he can spare his wife from years of heartache.  Caroline, in turn, makes her own decision.  Instead of taking the baby girl to the home, she leaves town and adopts the child as her own.  Decades pass, and the decisions leave indelible impressions on the two families involved.

This book hit home for me in a number of ways.  When I was fourteen I found out that I was "missing" a sibling (I won't go into it here, since the story is personal), and it's truly amazing the impact such a thing can have.  In the past thirteen years I've found myself wondering a lot of "what ifs", and how would my life have been different, and what would have changed, if this person had been a part of my life.  When I found out (as an emo teenager), I was stunned into crying, and wondering how the hell my parents had been able to keep this a secret from me for over a decade.  The pain that David Henry goes through in Daughter is palpable on every page.  Although he tries many, many times to finally confess to his wife Norah that their daughter didn't die at birth, that she had Downs syndrome and he gave her away, he always gets cold feet at the last minute and can't bring himself to do it.  I found myself practically screaming at the pages Just do it!  

The writing style was beautiful and completely rife with sadness.  I could relate to Norah the most at the beginning, but her character development turned me off later on.  I liked her most in the first few years after the birth of her children (and supposed loss of her daughter) as she constantly comes to grips with the loss of someone she never even truly knew.  I loved Paul (the son)'s character.  I pitied David so much throughout the book, as he goes through the years of struggling between leaving his life the way it is, and wondering constantly if he made the right decision.

I'm not going to lie; I'm sure that my own personal history has colored my view and love of this novel.  But it is really a masterful piece of work, altogether haunting and tragic and beautiful at once.  Loved it.

Rating: **** and 1/2