“My Darling,” he began. His voice broke, and the words that he had rehearsed so care­fully were gone. He closed his eyes, and when he could speak again more words came, unplanned. “Oh, my love” he said. “I’m so sorry. Our little daugh­ter died as she was born.”
Excerpt from The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

The Memory Keeper’s Daugh­ter spans over 40 years of the Henrys family his­tory. When David Henrys wife gives birth to twins, he is over­joyed, until he real­izes that one, a girl, has Down Syn­drome. In a split-​second deci­sion, he hands his new-​born daugh­ter to his Nurse and tells her to take her to an insti­tu­tion for those with Downs. He does so think­ing that what he is doing for the best, but the deci­sion will go on to haunt him for the rest of his life. The nurse, Car­o­line, also makes a split-​second deci­sion and takes the child to Philadel­phia and starts a new life. As the years go by, David and his wife grow more and more dis­tant as the secret slowly tears at the fabric of their family life. As they unravel, unable to stop what has been set in motion, every­one must find their own way in life.

The first couple chap­ters were a bore. I’ll admit that it took me nearly a month to get through the first 100 or so pages. After that point (some­where around there any­ways) the book hooked me, and I fin­ished the rest in record timing. The story is fluid and inter­est­ing, but also qui­etly sad. It’s an inter­est­ing point of view to take; watch­ing as a father who meant to only do good, cause so much sad­ness and sep­a­ra­tion. The time-​line is easy to follow, for the most part. I had a bit of trou­ble pic­tur­ing the char­ac­ters at their cor­rect age, though that is par­tially my own fault for not noting the dates in the book.

What really got me about this book is the silent con­tro­versy that it inspires. To give away ones child seems utterly bar­baric, and yet he was hon­estly doing what he thought was best. Chil­dren with Downs Syn­drome did not have a very good sur­vival rate in 1964, and he was trying to spare his wife the pain that would ensue from rais­ing a child with Downs. On the flip side, he did give their daugh­ter away, and then lie (and con­tinue to lie) about that action through the entire novel. Was he right to do it? I won’t answer that, because I feel that our past actions dic­tate who we are now. He did what he did, and he lived with it. I per­son­ally respect that, regard­less of the consequences.

I must also sing praises to Ms. Edwards for bring­ing to light how hard it was for those rais­ing Down Syn­drome chil­dren. Par­ents had to fight for every right that they felt their child should have. Proper health care, public edu­ca­tion, employ­ment, and the list goes on. The strug­gle that Car­o­line goes through to raise Phoebe is an impres­sive read in and of itself. Pack­age that with the fact that there was an uneasy, yet deep con­nec­tion between Car­o­line and David because of their daugh­ter, and you get a true under­stand­ing of just how hard their lives really were.

The novel also shows that though men­tally slower than normal people, those who have Down Syn­drome are no less enti­tled to things in life. Their achieve­ments, though pos­si­bly smaller-​seeming to ‘normal’ people, are in fact no more or less sig­nif­i­cant than any other per­sons achievements.

I wasn’t expect­ing this book to be nearly as good as it was, and I’m thank­ful for that. It’s not a book for every­one because it can drag on at times, and the chap­ter sizes are epic to say the least. Either way it’s a proud addi­tion to my shelf, and I’m a little sad to see the end of it.

7.5/10