|
The Memory Keeper's Daughter | 
 enlarge |
This product is Avalailable for USA Customers. If you live outside USA Search Below For U.K. and Germany Products.
|
|
|
| Author: Kim Edwards
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $14.99 (100%)
New (179) Used (1653) Collectible (10) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  878 reviews
Sales Rank: 1610
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0143037145
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780143037149
ASIN: 0143037145
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Kim Edwardss stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mothers silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and to keep her birth a secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, IThe Memory Keepers Daughter/I is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 A story of misguided Love November 30, 2008
br / Sometimes the choices we make in the name of protecting someone we love can cause the object of our love more harm than good. So it is with Dr. David Henry. br /When twins, a boy and a girl, are born to his wife, and the girl has Downs Syndrome, he decides it would be better for his wife to think the child died at birth. He puts the infant in the hands of his nurse to take to an institution. Instead, she keeps the girl and the child becomes a blessing to her and her husband. In the doctor's family, the wife cannot come to terms with her loss and her husband cannot forget the child he abandoned and both contribute to the breakdown of their marriage. The Memory Keeper's Daughter is an excellent story of both heartbreak and happiness and the validation of Downs Syndrome children as loving, happy individuals and, although they may need extra care, they can be as much a blessing to a family as any child. br /Eunice Boeve, author of Ride a Shadowed Trailbr /
 Well written, but . . . November 28, 2008
I had high hopes for this book and was disappointed from the beginning. Although descriptive, it failed to evoke emotion. I found myself wanting to be finished with the book. I love books of all types, but I want them to entertain me. This one didn't.
Beautiful, artful handling of many difficult themes November 26, 2008
I found the story to be beautiful and sad, but fell short of depressing. Instead, I was fascinated as Edwards deftly explored so many themes. She accurately, yet with a graceful subtely, reflected the epochal decades the characters pass through in the book. The disappointment for couples of finding it so difficult to remain in love, or even simply to communicate, after marriage. The long stretches of emotionally numbing day-to-day life in a marriage. The very real and little undstood depression mothers often experience when their children are very young, when they are beautiful yet so emotionally and physically draining. The challange to so many people who, like David, left poor, rural communities post WWII, getting an education, yet still feeling a keen sense of inadequacy or embarrassment about their origins. The transition afoot in the 60s and 70s, and the disorientation often involved for both wives and husbands, in finding, feeling that it was not necessarily a given that women must stay at home rearing children. How do couples maintain their individuality within a relationship, without erecting walls between them that can't be crossed. The stunning dislocation for parents of trying to cope with volatile teenage children, and often not surviving unscathed.br /br /Hence, the story treats so much more than the effect of guilt over the dark secret of the twin sister. The delicate personal and societal issues of dealing with handicapped persons are, like the other themes, handled tenderly and openly, yet without being forced on the reader. Nevertheless, much of what Edwards describes could happen in any relationship, to any couple trying to master the complexities of making marriage and family work, particularly in that era. It's almost as if the secret of Phoebe's existence serves to accentuate, accelerate and heighten the tensions that would have have existed, in any event, in the lives of Norah and David. This secret gives what might otherwise be mundane themes an added edge and poignancy, a reason to be written about. br /br /. br /br /br /
 Excellent November 25, 2008
This is a beautifully written, thought-provoking book that explores love, lies, and the spiritual poverty that stems from shame. I loved every page.
Sweet, Predictable, Easy Read November 23, 2008
Normally I eschew the "IT" novels - usually they bore me with their lack of imagination and are two dimensional and written for the "beach book" type of readers. I had no intention of reading this book but it seemed to creep up everywhere - on the front tables at Barnes Nobles and Borders, to every thrift store I found - so I finally gave in to read it. br /br /It wasn't as horribly romance-novel like as I expected but it didn't turn me on my head with the wonders of its use of language. It was fine for what it was and somewhat sweet. It was, however, incredibly predictable. It was obvious that the wife would feel lost, the husband would grow distant and the son would feel the stress of that kind of home. Would anyone find out that the daughter was brought up by the nurse? Would everyone bond together in the end? Sure, we all knew it was coming. br /br /For a first novel, it was adequate. Some of the phrases were well turned but it did feel a bit like mind candy - nothing to provoke a lot of thought, no characterizations that weren't twinged with stereotype. The depth I was hoping for never arrived. br /br /Would I recommend it? Sure, if you just want something of fluff to keep you occupied for a while. But as great literature, no.
|
|
|
Powered by CheapSoftwaresale.com 2008
| |
