Book Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

November 5, 2006

My friend Caroline told me she had an absolutely wonderful book for me to read and gave me 6 days in which to read it before she had to return it to her sister. Now, 6 days doesn't seem an unreasonable amount of time to read a book, but lately I seem to have developed narcolepsy, and I usually manage about 10 pages per night. But The Memory Keeper's Daughter (by Kim Edwards) definitely kept me awake and mesmerized. This is the story of a doctor who delivers his own twins on a winter night. His firstborn, a son, is perfectly healthy, but the girl is born with Down's syndrome. Neither he nor his wife knew that they were expecting twins, and he makes a split-second decision to "spare" his wife by giving the baby girl to the nurse. And the story goes from there...(and yes, I finished it in 6 days!)