*Please note: There are spoilers...

This review is from the NutterMother March Book Club

Brief plot synopsys: It is the story of a doctor who while delivering his twin babies during a snowstorm, discovers his daughter is born with Down Syndrom. He gives the baby to the nurse and tells her to take the baby to an institution, meanwhile telling his wife the baby was born dead. What happens next is the unfolding of the two children’s lives at the cost of decision made by one...

One thing I have learned about bookclub is that writing just after I have finished a book is WAY easier than writing days or in the case of The Help, weeks later. It is far harder to find that connection, rather re-connect to characters, events, and themes when you have walked away from it for a while.

Well it’s either that, or it’s my mom brain acting up again, which makes it impossible to recall anything after Wednesday.

Moving on…

Edwards’s book, The Memory Keepers Daughter, is about loss. This story is about how a man believes, based on the events of his own past, can control how lives are redirected in an effort to shield his wife from pain. Unfortunately what he is ultimately doing is setting them up for a life of emotional pain and regret.

David, as a result of his ‘secret’ became a man closed off from his family. Although always respected by his patients, David managed to conceal himself and isolate from his family and withdraw into his photography. David lived in fear and regret always asking himself “should he or shouldn’t he” on so many levels, whether it was to connected with his son, tell his wife the truth about Pheobe, or his knowledge of Howard, or look for Caroline, he could never find truly find his own footing because he was always wavering emotionally. Not even after connecting with Rosemary, was he able to come clean to his wife. And I wonder if we, the reader, are suppose to feel sorry for David, because he has spent his life tormented by guilt and regret.

I sit here wondering… thinking about being a David a doctor no less, giving up a baby because it seemed different. Fine it was 1964, but I somehow feel like it was not his decision to make. Perhaps because am a mother, but I don’t believe that is it. David was a coward, and his actions reflected that. His life was full guilt and regret but he did that to himself and never once tried to atone it. I could not forgive that.

Norah, never moved out of loss. She was always mourning the “what could have.” Had Pheobe lived, had David connected with her, had she been able to love Paul without worrying she would lose. She would forever be broken by the events of that night.

Paul lived in a world of isolation. He found the solace in music that he could not find in his family. He was always worried by the looming secrets and loss that hung in his house. Paul was a bystander, but also a casualty of his father decision.

Caroline’s life was perhaps not as tragic as David and Norah’s. When they both “lost” a child, she gained one. Caroline’s life began when Pheobe was thrusted upon her, and she made every effort to make it a positive decision and outcome for the child. Caroline though scared, and at times alone, really began to live her life as David and Norah regressed from theirs.

As their lives progressed through the novel, we saw how David and Norah emotional disconnected. And we spent much of the novel drawn into their isolation. Watching them remove themselves from each other’s lives emotionally. However, a moment happened when Norah was packing up David photo room after he had died. She had found two boxes, one with a series of Paul’s childhood photos and another with random pictures of girls growing up through the ages. Nora instantly connected and recognized these images as a filler for Phoebes lost childhood. Norah finally was able to connect to David through his photography. Her entire married life all Nora needed to know was that David felt her loss, and to know he had felt the child’s loss as deeply as she had, and finally when she had it was long after he had passed away. But that connection was fleeting, as moments later Caroline knocked at the door, and unintentionally destroyed any chances of Norah truly reconnecting to David. And as the secrets unfolded I think Norah never wanted to recover it.

When I think about that moment, Norah starting to feel at peace after so many years, it makes you wonder if it would have been better had Caroline never knocked on the door at all…

After meeting Pheobe, it seems Paul starts to develop the real emotional connection. Norah, seemed so disconnected to me, her actions felt mechanical. Offering Pheobe to live at her house, to visit her in France, to come to her wedding, these were all about Norah and her feelings, they were not about connecting to Pheobe.

Is this Norah’s fault? After all the years of sadness could she connect? Her adult life was spent identifying herself as a woman who had lost. She lost her relationship with her husband, her connection with her son, and at one point she had lost her own identity. When it came time to find herself again, years later, it was without her husband, in a new career, and independent. Yes, she still had a relationship with her son, but this is her adult son, he was a different version of the boy she grew up with. So when Pheobe re-entered her life, I don’t think she was fully able to commit to acknowledging her feelings towards and her feelings about the past because this living Pheobe was not the baby she had lost. The Pheobe she had lost and never seen was fragile and gentle, this living girl was different, she was a girl with disabilities, a girl she didn’t know.

Paul, on the other hand was open, more willing to connect. He was also able to forgive his father and understand he needed to move on. And because of this, Paul could eventually become the happy person he always wanted to be, Norah could not.

Thought…Why didn’t Edwards go into the character of Pheobe more? Perhaps she did not want to discourage readers by taking about Downs Syndrom? Or did her story not need to be told because she was the only character that grew up in a loving home? Perhaps I just needed to understand the struggle a bit more, what it was like growing up or raising a challenged child in the late 60’s. I know the author mentioned Caroline’s struggle to get her into school, and not having a lot of social empathy, but I felt the book was so rich with the emotions of the Henry family, it lacked on Caroline’s end.

Your thoughts?

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NutterMother April book choice: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant