Cannonball #22: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
by Caroline
Physician David Henry is in his mid thirties, his wife Norah her early twenties. The year is 1964. Norah is very pregnant and due to a non-commedia of errors her husband delivers the baby, which turns out to be babies, and the unexpected twin is born with Down syndrome. In a moment of wrenching reader discomfort, David sends the baby away with the obstetric nurse, giving her instructions to leave the baby at a nearby institution.
Oh, bother.
The nurse stops at the institution just long enough to look in and be rightfully horrified, then sweeps the baby up and embarks on a new life for them both. And the rest of the book follows the princess-and-the-pea festering of David’s one swift decision, this crooked root from which only a new and different kind of tree can grow. I can’t explain much of the rest of the plot without ruining important details.
Edwards writes beautifully, with lushness and luxury but without drag or pretension. The book’s very ending did not rub me the right way but I see its purpose and perhaps it speaks more clearly to other readers.
Letters form an important part of the narrative, as do photographs. David’s physician life folds in nicely with a sweet Journal of the American Medical Association essay about a grateful letter-writing patient.
Cannonball logo font: Sketch Rockwell. For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.
one response
of course, i beat scrabble a long time ago.