Book Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

It took me such a long time to get into this book! It just starts in a such an awfully slow way! I really don't remember why I decided to pick up this book but I did! As mentioned before the book starts really slow and the book itself is really slow it isn't a complicated read it is written in a simple manner but the story just goes on in such a slow way!

Every time I picked up the book I read couple of pages until I just gave up, it was such a boring book! The concept is great! But the writing is just tedious! But when I was traveling back to Geneva and had nothing else to read for 12 hours I managed to finish it (with some naps in between)

On the back of the book it says:

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 forever.

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 find the blurb isn't at all accurate for what is happening in the book, yes, David does give the nurse the baby but it is the nurse that decides to take care of the baby. Furthermore, when I was reading the book it didn't feel like it was grief tearing the family apart it was selfishness of them all. The little girl didn't have to make her own way in the world since she was very well taken care of by the nurse and the nurses husband.

The book starts in March 1964 and the last chapter takes part on 1st of September 1989. The story starts with Norah going into labor and her husband David, eleven years older than her, delivers the babies. The story starts slowly and the delivery takes about 20 pages of horribly written back-story that really doesn't give anything towards the plot.

I never felt any sympathy towards any of the characters, they were all selfish in their own ways and didn't evolve throughout the 401 pages, yes 401 pages of complaining. The book wasn't about grief, it was about how families can't stick together without having faith in each other. It felt like it was supposed all to be David's fault and he could just never catch a break. 

At last, some quotes from the book itself.

"Despite herself, Norah felt a surge of pleasure. She had given up on hope of such an invitation years ago, after Bree's scandalous marriage and divorce." Page 129

"He saw Paul a block before the party, walking down the sidewalk with his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulder hunched. There were cars parked all along the road, no place to pull over, so David slowed and tapped the horn. Paul looked up, and for a moment David was afraid he might run." Page 199

"Caroline caught the corner of the Polaroid between her thumb and first finger as it slipped from the camera, the image already emerging. The table with its white cloth appeared to float on a sea of dark grass. Moonflowers, white and faintly luminous, climbed the hillside. Phoebe was a pale blur in her confirmation dress. Caroline waved the photo dry in the fragrant air." Page 221

All in all, I would say that it is a bad book, but the concept is great.


Bisous

P.S. Check out my other book reviews here