Book-It 'o9! Book #49
More of the Fifty Books Challenge! This was in a stack from my parents' online bookselling business.
Title: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Details: Copyright 2005, Viking Press
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down Syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of choice. "
Why I Wanted to Read It:The familiar Penguin books packaging has housed several entertaining reads in the past. Also, the cover is beautifully done. You can't always tell a book by its cover, but most of the time you can.
How I Liked It: The book starts out strong and hinges on how a seemingly minute decision can change the lives of so many. The character development also starts out strong and window into the mindset of the affected are fairly clear and detailed.
Unfortunately, the book starts hopping around stretches of time. Understandable, but it seems like there's an increasing loss of characterization that occurs when this happens. Several authors have done this, the time skipping bit, and it is possible to carry off without losing the reader or the characters. However, Edwards doesn't manage to do so. A year, five years, seven years, five years, six years, a year. The author does well with essential quotidian details of the characters, but loses it by not properly "catching the reader up" on what's happened since. This wouldn't be so obvious were it not for the fact two of the central characters we're known since their birth and are, in essence, watching grow up. The character of the son is particularly shallow and it seems an essential part of the book is missing by not fleshing out his story in particular. Even peripheral characters like the homeless pregnant teen the father takes in (the only person with whom he shares the story of his deception) and Al, the truck-driver that the nurse Caroline meets and eventually falls in love with, seem to have crucial moments that we missed. I suppose it's a credit to the author that the reader even notices and cares if their stories aren't told, since the characters are so engaging, but it's nonetheless annoying and distracting.
By the end of the book, the story has essential stopped trying to explain any kind of motivation of the characters. It has the feel of merely a story being relayed, whereas the beginning suggested a strong story-telling.
One might say it's hard to pack the details and motivations for so many characters in 401 page book. It's true that that kind of frugality is an art, but it's one that other authors have managed, and with a much larger and more varying cast of characters. Middlesex takes us through three generations and eighty years in 529 pages and doesn't want for any character motivations or insight.
The central theme of a single, immediate-decision action causing having so many consequences and affecting so many lives, as well as the theme of the parallel stories actually works, despite what feels like the increasing hollowness of the characters.
This could've been an amazing first draft to an incredibly book had Edwards realized the need for a deeper (or consistently deep) insight into her characters.
Notable: Although each chapter opens with the year and often the month as well as the year, Edwards occasionally feels the irksome (and off-putting) need to remind (rather than show) us in the chapters, within the text.
"'I know,' she said, because it was 1964 and he was her husband and she had always deferred to him completely." (pg 38)
"[I]n 1964 breast-feeding was radical, and she'd had a hard time finding information." (pg 42)
Something as subtle as a year-specific reference (as Edwards manages in a later section with a mention about the "recent" Kent State shooting) makes its point and gives the reader a little credit as well. Her above statements not only come across as spoon-feeding the reader, they also manage to damage the narrative by removing us from the scene at hand (that was then, this is now). Odd that she could manage a subtle reference (what to do as a writer) along with a flat statement (what NOT to do as a writer). Yet another example of why this book could've used at least one rewrite.
Title: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Details: Copyright 2005, Viking Press
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down Syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of choice. "
Why I Wanted to Read It:The familiar Penguin books packaging has housed several entertaining reads in the past. Also, the cover is beautifully done. You can't always tell a book by its cover, but most of the time you can.
How I Liked It: The book starts out strong and hinges on how a seemingly minute decision can change the lives of so many. The character development also starts out strong and window into the mindset of the affected are fairly clear and detailed.
Unfortunately, the book starts hopping around stretches of time. Understandable, but it seems like there's an increasing loss of characterization that occurs when this happens. Several authors have done this, the time skipping bit, and it is possible to carry off without losing the reader or the characters. However, Edwards doesn't manage to do so. A year, five years, seven years, five years, six years, a year. The author does well with essential quotidian details of the characters, but loses it by not properly "catching the reader up" on what's happened since. This wouldn't be so obvious were it not for the fact two of the central characters we're known since their birth and are, in essence, watching grow up. The character of the son is particularly shallow and it seems an essential part of the book is missing by not fleshing out his story in particular. Even peripheral characters like the homeless pregnant teen the father takes in (the only person with whom he shares the story of his deception) and Al, the truck-driver that the nurse Caroline meets and eventually falls in love with, seem to have crucial moments that we missed. I suppose it's a credit to the author that the reader even notices and cares if their stories aren't told, since the characters are so engaging, but it's nonetheless annoying and distracting.
By the end of the book, the story has essential stopped trying to explain any kind of motivation of the characters. It has the feel of merely a story being relayed, whereas the beginning suggested a strong story-telling.
One might say it's hard to pack the details and motivations for so many characters in 401 page book. It's true that that kind of frugality is an art, but it's one that other authors have managed, and with a much larger and more varying cast of characters. Middlesex takes us through three generations and eighty years in 529 pages and doesn't want for any character motivations or insight.
The central theme of a single, immediate-decision action causing having so many consequences and affecting so many lives, as well as the theme of the parallel stories actually works, despite what feels like the increasing hollowness of the characters.
This could've been an amazing first draft to an incredibly book had Edwards realized the need for a deeper (or consistently deep) insight into her characters.
Notable: Although each chapter opens with the year and often the month as well as the year, Edwards occasionally feels the irksome (and off-putting) need to remind (rather than show) us in the chapters, within the text.
"'I know,' she said, because it was 1964 and he was her husband and she had always deferred to him completely." (pg 38)
"[I]n 1964 breast-feeding was radical, and she'd had a hard time finding information." (pg 42)
Something as subtle as a year-specific reference (as Edwards manages in a later section with a mention about the "recent" Kent State shooting) makes its point and gives the reader a little credit as well. Her above statements not only come across as spoon-feeding the reader, they also manage to damage the narrative by removing us from the scene at hand (that was then, this is now). Odd that she could manage a subtle reference (what to do as a writer) along with a flat statement (what NOT to do as a writer). Yet another example of why this book could've used at least one rewrite.