January reading: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
List Price: $14.00


I normally don't read books that would appeal to the "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the NBC Today's Book Club...but it was the first week in January, I was low on cash, so I had to hit my Book Reserve*.

Summary:

In 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, Norah Henry delivers twins. The doctor and father of the children sees the baby girl has Down's syndrome. He instructs his nurse to dump her in an institution. The nurse disobeys and runs away to raise the baby herself. The father-doctor tells his wife that the little girl died. The book proceeds to follow the twins until they become adults. The moral here is: secrets are bad for families.

Media Reviews

Publisher's Weekly
"This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion."

Booklist - Carolyn Kubisz
"Unfolding the plot over the course of 25 years, Edwards tells a moving story of two families bound by a secret that both eats away at relationships and eventually helps to create new ones."

The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Some ominously saccharine moments indicate that Edwards can slip into the treacly trade -- "The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away" -- but these gaffes are relatively infrequent, especially considering the presence of a handicapped character, who would, in less disciplined hands, be used to generate a waterfall of sentimental tears.

My review:
Rating: ehhh....

This book was ooookkkkaaayyy--especially since I did not pay for it. The prose was simple and thoughtful but the story line was, well, trite. (The tied-up-in-a-bow ending was hackneyed and predictable.) But having seen daytime tv and a few too many Lifetime for Women movies, I can see why this book has had considerable market success. For me, I prefer it when authors don't BEAT ME OVER THE HEAD with some moral for me to learn. (I don't read to become a better person. I read to escape--get it, people!)

*Laura's Book Reserve consists of books that I somehow managed to get for free but are not appealing to me but so I keep them as a secret stash in case of an emergency when I don't have access to (or the cash to buy) a book I would prefer to read.