Edwards' Daughter Is Stunning

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I'm stunned.

Last night, I went to bed at 8:30 p.m., exhausted from a long weekend and a night of very little sleep the night before. I picked up the book that had arrived in the mail that afternoon, planning to read a chapter before I fell asleep.

It was 2 a.m. before the covers of that book once again closed onto the pages.

Kim Edwards' The Memory-Keeper's Daughter is simply the most amazing and stunning book I've read this year-and perhaps even longer than that. It has just about everything you could want in a book: interesting characters, a compelling plot, beautiful writing, and complex themes. It's a book laden with metaphors and infused with emotions.

It's really, really good.

All right, I've taken a deep breath and I think I've gotten control of myself. I'll try to get beyond the grammar school "I liked it, it was good" and say why this is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Sleeper Hit Of 2006

This is the book that's being hailed as the summer's sleeper hit. It was released with little fanfare last year as a hardcover. Then, when it was released in paperback this year, it suddenly took off in popularity, rocketing up The New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists and staying there.

The novel is based on a true incident, one that was given to the author and stayed with her a few years until she figured out how to make a story out of it. The novel opens in 1964 with David and Norah Henry on the evening that Norah goes into labor. A snow storm keeps them from getting to the hospital, but as David is a doctor, he's able to get them to his private practice office and conduct the delivery with the help of his nurse.

They're all surprised when Norah delivers twins. One child, Paul, is perfectly healthy. The second child, Phoebe, has obvious signs of Down's Syndrome. David, wanting to shield his wife from the pain of raising a retarded child who was unlikely to survive childhood (or so they thought in those days), sent the child away with the nurse to an institution and tells his wife the child is dead.

The nurse, Caroline, is repulsed by the task and by the institution that she takes the baby too. So instead, she takes the child, leaves the city and raises the girl as her own. The novel continues for the next 25 years, following the parallel lives of these two families.

Hearts Seared With Regret

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is the story of the regrets and loneliness and loss that spring out of that one moment's decision. We are given the emotional and family history that leads up to that decision and all the repercussions that follow.

Edwards writes in a highly lyrical manner, infusing every sentence with poetry and metaphor. There are times when such weight bears her sentences down, but those times are rare and easily pardoned given the richness and beauty of the rest of the text. It is her language that draws us into the hearts and souls of each of the characters. It is the language that helps us to understand both the deep pains and the moments of joy and connection.

Eminently Empathetic Characters

It is also written in a way where it is hard to dislike any of the characters. One expects to dislike the doctor who has behaved so repulsively, but instead, the reader is drawn into an intense empathy with him. He's likeable even as he alienates those around him. As you learn of the pain of his ungrieved past, you learn that he is still making decisions out of the pain of his childhood. He is a man who cannot see the world as it is, he must transform it to remove the pain-even if in doing so he removes the humanity as well.

David Henry is so intent on protecting those he loves, he is unable to see that his acts of protection are suffocating and harming those he loves the most. He thinks it far better to avoid pain than to accept it, experience it, and then grow through it. His need to protect erects walls between himself and his wife and son, walls that they cannot understand and that force them to grow ever more angry with him.

Metaphors and Fragility of the Human Heart

Edwards creates a wonderful metaphor in the book as David adopts photography as a hobby. David spends his life trying to hide reality in his photos. He tries to transform reality into a thing of beauty regardless of what the reality is.

Edwards also highlights the fragility of relationships and how difficult it is for us to trust each other and connect each other. She explores the effect that a secret has on relationships and how difficult it is to untell a secret, especially if the one who has kept it believes it will cause further pain. Indeed, it is the helplessness of David to undo his wrong and his choice to wallow in deeply felt regret that is so heart-wrenching. We see that he cannot have authentic relationships with anyone except the one who knows all of his secrets. There is a lack of ease as his internal soundtrack repeats, "I love you, I love you, I lied to you."

On the flip side, we also see how Caroline's choice forever affects her. She also keeps David's secret for a long time, telling not even those who are close to her. She allows everyone to think that Phoebe is her daughter. But the secret has a different effect on her and her relationships because the secret has different motivations.

David kept the secret in order to "protect," an impulse that implies a fragility in his partner and a lack of faith in her strength. Caroline keeps the secret out of a fear for herself. She also choose a different path when it comes to being protective. Her heart yearns to keep all bad things away from Phoebe, but instead she pushes her and helps her to gain an independence that the "experts" of the time said was not possible.

Overcoming Adversity

In a powerful fashion, Edwards shows us the struggles of parents of that era-struggles to get their children an education, a right to participate in society, and to create a normal life for them. We see the pain of how people treat her and her daughter and read the incredibly insensitive things that people say. There is one scene where my eyes blurred with tears as she confronted a cruel nurse who could not see how a child with Down's Syndrome could be anything but an unwanted burden.

It is in the character of Phoebe and in her ability to give a simple and uncomplicated love that we find hope for redemption. There is a searing contrast between Paul and Phoebe. Paul rebels and is filled with an animosity toward his father while Phoebe finds a contentment with her life and joy in her surroundings, despite her life being much starker and filled with less promise than that of her twin's.

There is so much beauty in this book even amidst the pain and broken hearts. Yes, it is a story of regret, of lies, of alienation, and loneliness. But it is also a book of redemption, of hope, and of love. There is tremendous growth in every single character, growth that intricately illustrates the repercussions of a choice that is life-changing for everyone it touches.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a book that is worth reading many times over, for there is far too much poured into its 401 pages to get everything out of it the first time through. It's a book that deserves to be elevated to the status of a classic.

--B. Redman