The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

By: Kim Edwards
www.memorykeepersdaughter.com/

2 Beers

I found this book grueling to get through. I had no interest in the characters and even less in the plot. Something kept me reading, but I really can't put my finger on it.
The story starts in 1964 where the young wife of a doctor goes into labor during an ice storm. Her husband calls his trusty nurse to meet them at his office and delivers his twins (surprise!). Only problem, the girl-twin has downs syndrome. So the doctor/husband, being a caring, upstanding kind of guy, decides to give the little girl to the nurse to take to an institution for mentally handicapped people. He then tells his wife, who was too doped up to realize what was happening, that the baby died and it's all ok because they have a perfect little boy. The nurse ends up keeping the daughter and raising her as her own.
The book has a dual narrative; the nurse raising this downs syndrome girl as a single mom, fighting for the rights of her daughter to have an education and the doctor's family raising the son but being torn apart by the wife's depression and the husband's lies. It all sounds interesting but really isn't at all. The story of the nurse and downs syndrome daughter could have been really good if it had been given the time and space it deserved. Unfortunately, it feels like an after-thought. There's no real character development for either of them. They are very cookie-cutter and have the depth of an after-school special. The author sets the doctor up as a complete asshole at the beginning of the book and spends the second half trying to show him as an upstanding guy. Doesn't work. He's just an ass. And his wife isn't all that much better. She's selfish and whiney.
I really wanted to like this book and that may be why I kept reading. I was hoping it would get better and it just really didn't. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I was a wife or mother, but I doubt it. Avoid this book. The cover is pretty and the back-cover summary sounds great, but don't get sucked in.