The Memory-Keeper's Daughter
This novel by Kim Edwards was actually pretty good. It abandons the clipped modern style which I’ve come to loathe and uses something a bit more lyrical, even if it’s closer to Anita Shreve than not. There’s some nice imagery and some kindness towards the reader, I think, and it’s told well, so that you want to keep reading until the finish.
Basically, a doctor delivers his wife’s twins at his own clinic, and ends up giving away his newborn daughter with Down syndrome, telling his wife that she had died, while only the boy, Paul, lived. He lives his whole life with this secret, while their life falls apart because of it. Meanwhile, his nurse, rather than putting the girl, Phoebe, into an institution, takes her home and raises her. Her life is transformed by this decision.
It’s a good way of showing how a split-second choice – to have an ordinary or an extraordinary life – can have such consequences. Sure, it’s simplistic to a certain extent (bad doctor gets punished, good nurse gets rewarded), but by showing every struggle, every continued choice, each moment when the secret could have been told and life could have been redeemed, Edwards makes it believable. It’s interesting historically, because she covers the early civil rights movements to allow children with Down syndrome into schools and jobs (it’s set between 60’s to 90’s), and also the change for women over that period, with the doctor’s wife, Norah, changing from housewife to career woman out of desperation. She also doesn’t make the nurse perfect – she has difficulty accepting Phoebe’s adulthood, for one thing, and the nurse too bears some of the responsibility for the secret.
I quite like the fact that there’s no easy redemption at the end. When they do meet, they meet with the awareness of all that’s been lost. The relationship between the doctor and his wife is never the same again; they end up divorcing. The relationship between the doctor and his son is never easy. There is some resolution when the doctor finally accepts his loss – not just the loss of his daughter but of his sister, whose childhood sufferings prompted the doctor’s decision – and when Norah and Paul finally get to meet Phoebe. But the outcome of that early decision can never be overcome, and that’s what makes the story interesting.
Basically, a doctor delivers his wife’s twins at his own clinic, and ends up giving away his newborn daughter with Down syndrome, telling his wife that she had died, while only the boy, Paul, lived. He lives his whole life with this secret, while their life falls apart because of it. Meanwhile, his nurse, rather than putting the girl, Phoebe, into an institution, takes her home and raises her. Her life is transformed by this decision.
It’s a good way of showing how a split-second choice – to have an ordinary or an extraordinary life – can have such consequences. Sure, it’s simplistic to a certain extent (bad doctor gets punished, good nurse gets rewarded), but by showing every struggle, every continued choice, each moment when the secret could have been told and life could have been redeemed, Edwards makes it believable. It’s interesting historically, because she covers the early civil rights movements to allow children with Down syndrome into schools and jobs (it’s set between 60’s to 90’s), and also the change for women over that period, with the doctor’s wife, Norah, changing from housewife to career woman out of desperation. She also doesn’t make the nurse perfect – she has difficulty accepting Phoebe’s adulthood, for one thing, and the nurse too bears some of the responsibility for the secret.
I quite like the fact that there’s no easy redemption at the end. When they do meet, they meet with the awareness of all that’s been lost. The relationship between the doctor and his wife is never the same again; they end up divorcing. The relationship between the doctor and his son is never easy. There is some resolution when the doctor finally accepts his loss – not just the loss of his daughter but of his sister, whose childhood sufferings prompted the doctor’s decision – and when Norah and Paul finally get to meet Phoebe. But the outcome of that early decision can never be overcome, and that’s what makes the story interesting.
posted by Carly at 12:10 pm
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