When was the memory keepers daughter written

The plot and synopsis of the story had such excellent promise but along the way the author dropped the ball. It was very difficult to relate or sympathize with Norah Henry, even though she is the one wronged by her husband's rash but not unfounded decision to lie about the "supposed" death of their mentally defected daughter while keeping her healthy twin brother. Norah's self destructive ways and at times selfish childishness did nothing but annoy me and drive me farther away from her pain.

What the author did really well was humanizing Dr. David Henry because reading the back of the novel i thought he was a monster. He was the only character i actually felt was not overly contrived. The major climax and confrontation i was hoping would happen between members of the family never occurred; instead the author decided do something that was shocking but totally unnecessary to the digression of the conflict.

So why did i bother giving it 2 stars? Because the one question i wanted answered -- what would possess a man to do such a horrible thing as to not only give away his newborn daughter but then lie about her death? Also the book was beautifully written, and i appreciate any book that can evoke emotion based on simple sentence construction.

So, i will look for other books by Kim Edwards -- at the library not the bookstore, for now. Jan 24, Elizabeth rated it really liked it Shelves: family-saga , i-own. The Memory Keeper's Daughter crept up on me in a way I never expected. After reading many conflicting reviews I assumed I would either DNF this book at worst or slap 3 stars on it at best.

In , Dr. David Henry delivers his own twins. His son is perfectly healthy. His daughter is born with Down's Syndrome. Remembering his own sickly sister who died young, and the unending sorrow it caused for his mother, he is determined to protect his wife from the same heartache.

He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution, but Caroline, the nurse, chooses to disappear into another city to raise the child herself.

The story unfolds over 25 years - two families, unknowingly bound by the fateful decision made long ago. Let me start off by saying, this book is not for the faint of heart. It is not a happy story. Henry and his wife Norah live a life teeming with grief; a heavy secret, unbeknownst to Norah, settles between them and grows ever larger as the years go by.

It's a story I might not have understood a few years ago. I've always been troubled by characters that keep secrets or avoid having important conversations, usually thinking it was bad plot device. But I've recently experienced things in my own family that have opened my eyes to certain behaviors. I think this was something that happened a lot in the 60 and 70s.

For whatever reason, families tended to brush things under the rug and keep skeletons in the closet. One of my favourite things about this book, apart from the writing which I found deeply engrossing, was the passage of time.

This book takes place over 25 years and I was never once confused about what year it was or how old the twins were at any given time. Kim Edwards' storytelling is seamless; one chapter melting perfectly into the next, even if they were five or ten years apart. This story won't be for everyone, but it's one I won't forget anytime soon. View all 5 comments. Jun 20, Michele rated it it was amazing.

Dark Trees in the Heart The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a story about a secret--a terrible, life-altering secret running central to the story and in the lives of the characters.

In spite of spanning only twenty-five years, it has an epic feel. A lot happens. We first meet Norah and David Henry on the stormy night she gives birth to twins. The boy, Paul, is born healthy. The second, an unexpected daughter, is born with Down's Syndrome.

While his wife lay unconscious, David, a doctor who presides Dark Trees in the Heart The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a story about a secret--a terrible, life-altering secret running central to the story and in the lives of the characters.

While his wife lay unconscious, David, a doctor who presides over the deliveries because their doctor is unable to get to them due to the snowstorm, makes the decision to tell his wife the second child died.

Trying to spare his wife the pain and suffering of having a child who, in his mind would surely die an early death, hands the baby to his nurse, Caroline Gill. He instructs her to take the child to an institution. Caroline finds she cannot leave the baby in this place, moves away and raises "Phoebe" on her own.

This sets the stage for the terrible secret David must live with and the consequences it has on his family. It's called The Memory Keeper's Daughter because David takes up photography and becomes obsessed with the process. Diving into his hobby, which ultimately brings notoriety to him, he is able to take his mind off his secret, and yet at the same time, focus on the life his lost daughter leads away from him. There is tremendous detail and one can feel the author using a variety of lenses to provide both wide-angle and tight, intimate views of each scene.

Although at times I felt it to be a bit repetitive and wished it were shorter by pages, I enjoyed the writing so much, along with the emotion it drew from me, that it didn't matter.

I kept turning pages waiting to see how it would all play out. I wasn't disappointed. This book made me ask the question. Dark trees in the heart, a fistful of bones. Apr 11, Brittany McCann rated it it was amazing Shelves: zchallenge , fiction , historical-fiction , romance , 5-stars , reviews , contemporary , mystery.

This book was heavy. I listened to this in my car, so it stretched out for a while, and I got to think on it and talk about it a LOT. The narrator: Martha Plimpton I guess there is also a version narrated by someone else , did a phenomenal book. She brought this book to life in a fantastic way. These two separate families, each with a twin, are told in chronological order from before birth. The life difficulties and Wow The life difficulties and joys between them were sometimes heartbreaking and hard to listen to.

A very great contemporary piece also deals a lot with the stigma of down syndrome and how people reacted to it, and the fights for equal rights for those deemed "retarded" or not worthy of a chance in life.

Overall this book was very well written. View 2 comments. Jan 09, Tung rated it did not like it. The book begins in The doctor then lies to his wife and tells her their daughter died at childbirth. Instead of delivering the child to the institution, however, the nurse instead runs off with the child to raise it as her own. The plot sets itself up for ongoing tension between the characters due to their past decisions, and then allows all of the characters to redeem themselves at the end.

The characters are stereotypes: the noble doctor struggling with a past decision motivated by his past grief; the unsatisfied grieving mother who finds solace in other ways; the noble mother who raises a disabled child to prove that everyone deserves equality.

My biggest grievance is that Edwards overwrites every scene. We understand that the characters all have made decisions they regret, and that their pasts inform their present and future actions. Pass on this, unless you have no sense of discernment and like trite stories. View all 7 comments. Mar 31, Carol rated it it was amazing Shelves: owned-books.

A beautiful and moving story about a secret kept for 25 years and the effects on the people involved. I really enjoyed this one. I knew the secret world come out eventually, I just had that feeling that it would, but I love how the writer moved each of the characters through the story. Jun 24, Richard Derus rated it did not like it. Children being treated like meat puppets, disabled children being lesser, unwanted, cheating spouses and gawdlike doctors You can't capture light.

You can only turn your face up and let it rain down. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away. Please Children being treated like meat puppets, disabled children being lesser, unwanted, cheating spouses and gawdlike doctors Pleased for you if this guff makes you happy.

It does not make me anything but irked. This book would have been better if they would have cut out all of the descriptions that were used. Too much "The wind is blowing, it was cold, etc". I wanted the author to get to the point already. Other than that a very sad story about the love between a husband and wife and the secrets that are kept between them. Although I enjoyed the book it was just ok because of all the extra that was there.

View all 6 comments. Nov 21, Kerri rated it really liked it. It was interesting to find myself feeling a great deal of compassion for someone who made a decision that I find absolutely appalling.

Telling your wife that one of the twins has died, rather than telling her she had Down's syndrome is something I can never really condone, even in a fictional scenario.

It's such a mind-boggling lie to tell anyone, let alone your spouse. Thankfully the story that formed around that lie was very compelling and I was able to enjoy it. I did enjoy the chapters where Norah grappled with her grief, struggled to deal with a marriage that no longer works. Her relationship with her sister was especially interesting.

However, it was the parts that followed Caroline and Phoebe that really stood out to me. This book made me realise that I had never really given much thought to the determined parents who fought hard for the rights of their children who were born with Down's syndrome.

Sadly, David Henry's reaction to his daughter, his decision that she should immediately sent to an institution, was the prevalent view at the time. I didn't know how little was known about Down's syndrome at the time, or that it was such a struggle to be taken seriously by doctors, schools etc.

This was what really absorbed me and what I keep thinking about in the time since I have finished reading the book. Perhaps not quickly. Perhaps not by the book. But what if they simply erased those growth and development charts, with their precise, constricting points and curves? What if they kept their expectations but erased the time line?

What harm could it do? Why not try? May 15, Carol rated it it was ok. Although the premise was extremely interesting, and there were true moments of brilliance in her characterizations, descriptions, and interactions, this book, more than anything, left me incredibly angry at the author. Her two stories are so clearly divided between good and evil, it's unrealistic. The last 50 pages or so are so filled with action that it made me wonder if she got to a certain point and her editor told Although the premise was extremely interesting, and there were true moments of brilliance in her characterizations, descriptions, and interactions, this book, more than anything, left me incredibly angry at the author.

The last 50 pages or so are so filled with action that it made me wonder if she got to a certain point and her editor told her she had to finish within a certain number of pages or time. Not to mention that we're supposed to believe David died in his 50s from running. We were never given any reason to believe he had any medical problems, and if anything, the stress in his life had dissipated!

Add on the fact that she brings up the same metaphor over and over again get rid of that damn wall, already, we know it's there! You don't have to point it out! The only saving grace was that so many members of my book club felt the same exact way. Oct 01, Katie rated it really liked it. I highly enjoyed this novel.

Reading some of the more negative reviews, I would have to disagree about the plot needing to be more exciting or the lack of depth in the characters. I believe that was the point of the novel entirely, we cannot label the doctor who gave away his child as "bad" because his troubled past was revealed and he was genuinely trying to do good, and it was clearly unfolding throughout the progression of the story that he began to regret his once-confident choice, but felt I highly enjoyed this novel.

I believe that was the point of the novel entirely, we cannot label the doctor who gave away his child as "bad" because his troubled past was revealed and he was genuinely trying to do good, and it was clearly unfolding throughout the progression of the story that he began to regret his once-confident choice, but felt as though he had to remain stable and confident with his choices, which ended up making him a distant husband and individual. We cannot label his wife, Norah, as some sort of "pissy alcaholic", as she had been lied to about her childs death, then denied the right to grieve about it, followed by suddenly having a very distant husband.

I believe some reading in between the lines was necessary to realize that these characters were going through emotional changes that were very realistic to real life and how the characters hardly even knew themselves, let alone were able to have very distinct and obvious personalities for the reader to fall in love with. Their growth and change over time was incredibly interesting to read about.

The plot progressed slowly but in a satisfactory manner. There was constant stress and debate throughout the book from the doctor David 's side about whether or not he should reveal the truth to his wife, it was quite literally taking years off of his life. The novel would have appeared unrealistic if the characters somehow stumbled upon the downs syndrome baby on their own.

Norah embarks on a series of affairs, and her son Paul rebels against the "roar of silence" in which he is raised. The secondary story of Phoebe and Caroline is the stronger strand, with Caroline the only really convincing character, her created family far more cohesive than its nuclear equivalent in Kentucky.

The lives of Phoebe, Paul and their parents seem destined to clash, implode or collapse with revelation, and the narrative pull never wavers. But for a novel so fraught with drama it is strangely sterile, the characters themselves the enactment of a good concept.

Reading it feels like being tugged through a vacuum. With such a long progression of parallel lives, we need the pay-off to be dramatic, but the expected explosion turns out to be more of a happy fizzle. Phoebe, his thematic opposite, practices immediate care and love toward everyone and everything she meets. The hallmark of this love is a willing embrace of change and the unexpected encounters and accidents in life.

These two poles of control and compassion are represented by various symbols throughout the book. Symbols of control include bones, stones, snow, and photography. Symbols of compassion include water, other liquids, and music. Characters in the novel with challenges of several types struggle to find community and understanding. The Party Crasher. The Island of Missing Trees. The Paper Palace. Miranda Cowley Heller. You and Me on Vacation. The Shadow. To Kill A Mockingbird. Our top books, exclusive content and competitions.

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